


Unequally Rational and Emotional's Mahora Gakuen Tyûtôbu 3-A.

by Darkenning, OverMaster



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Mahou Sensei Negima!, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, THE iDOLM@STER
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:36:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 51,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2736224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkenning/pseuds/Darkenning, https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverMaster/pseuds/OverMaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An adaptation of doujin circle Gambler Club's Mahora Gakuen Tyûtôbu 3-A and Eva-Nyan stories, set in the world of Unequally Rational and Emotional. Mostly written by Darkenning with some input from OverMaster. Absolutely not for minors!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Unequally Rational and Emotional](https://archiveofourown.org/works/512220) by [Darkenning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkenning/pseuds/Darkenning), [OverMaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverMaster/pseuds/OverMaster), [Shadow_Crystal_Mage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Crystal_Mage/pseuds/Shadow_Crystal_Mage). 



Disclaimer:  _Mahou Sensei Negima_  and all related elements and characters are the property and creation of Akamatsu Ken, and the authors of this humble piece have made no material profit from it, and never will do.

 _Ah my Goddess!_  and all its characters were created by and are the property of Fujishima Kosuke.

 _Mai Hime_  and all its characters belong to Sunrise.

Batman, Superman and all related characters and elements belong to DC Comics.

All other characters mentioned also belong to their respective copyright holders. We make no money out of them, either.

Any resemblance of anything in this story with anything in real life beyond "human beings have eyes, ears and legs" is a simple coincidence.

Please don't read this if you are underage or otherwise unable to handle graphically sexual material.

Thanks a million to Shadow Crystal Mage, Darkenning, and all others who collaborated with  _Unequally Rational and Emotional_ , and hopefully will continue doing so.

* * *

**Unequally Rational and Emotional's Mahora Gakuen Tyûtôbu 3-A**.  
  


* * *

**Book One**.

* * *

 

 _Funeral March of a Marionette_  (better known to most as the theme music for the _Alfred Hitchcock Presents_  TV show) sounds as the arch-fiend, the grinning beast, the monster comedian himself, strides on stage gracefully, hands crossed behind his back, smiling in a way that would make the devil uncomfortable.

Until he whips out a tommy gun and fires a burst into someone behind the stage. There's a scream and a sound of something hitting the floor.

"You!" He points at another direction off camera. "You are my Number One now! Replace that music with something more fitting!"

Quickly, the music is replaced by the Joker theme from  _Batman The Animated Series_.

"Better, much better! Hello. Guess Who here. Thought you wouldn't have my gratuitous cameo this chapter, didn't you? Joke's on you! My contract's got some darn good clauses. And tonight, I'm here to do all of you a public service! I'll warn you about how I'll gas your whole precious city tonight..."

Whispers from off camera. He blinks.

"Whaddya mean, 'Batman foiled the plan'?"

He fires another burst. Another scream. Another thud.

And a sigh. "You, you, over there, you're the new Number One. Well then, ladies and germs, I'll have to warn you about something else. Something that scares even me so deeply my skin goes white ... oh, wait ... and my mind breaks down ... no, no, wait, definitely wait ... Anyway, I must warn you about SEX!"

He nods firmly, folding his arms behind himself once more.

"Yes, this is a special Lemon chapter of Unequally Rational and Emotional! Your dear little series has its cherry popped here! Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! Hide your children! Ship Grandma overseas! Pray to your gods for sweet release!" Another cocky grin. "I know Negi will get  _his_."

A wink, then he walks around to pour himself some lemonade from an oversized jar. The jar has a skull and crossbones with 'ACTUALLY ONLY LEMONADE, WE SWEAR' written under it. Instead of drinking the lemonade, he paces around with the glass in his hand.

"Y'know, I'll never understand what's so special about that kid. Maybe, just maybe, if he aged twenty years, bulked up, and started wearing all black with pointy ears ..."

He falls silent, as though considering, then shakes his head.

"Nah. Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice. Anyway, some people seem to dig him, and we're about to see exactly how much! So, if you are still here, don't say we didn't warn you, and get ready to enjoy a taste of fresh, fresh lemon! Although  _I_  think they should call it a banana fanfic, for obvious reasons. Oh, riiiiiiight, sorry, I forgot the lesbians ..."

Humming, he walks over to a black haired, very tall, very skinny, man tied to a chair, with his head pulled back and a rusty metal funnel attached with tape at his mouth.

"OM here will be taking a break from main writing duties to make room for our dear Darkenning, isn't he a cutie?" Joker says while patting the man's shoulder. "Here, have a drink on us, OM! HA HA HA HA!" he laughs, pouring the liquid down the funnel.

The camera mercifully pans up leaving the tied author out of focus as Joker smiles pleasantly for the audience. "And the show's on, cuties! Please keep your safety belts on and your hands out of your pants at all times!"

While horrible gagging and choking sounds mix with impotent kicks against the floor, he extends the half-full jar to the public.

"A drink before hitting the road?"

* * *

_**Monday Afternoon:** _

It has been said that every road, even those to paradise and hell, starts with a single step.

In this particular case, Hasegawa Chisame, fifteen, light brown hair, zits, glasses, took the first step at Library Island, while carrying a few books required for Itoshiki-sensei's Social Studies assignments.

As she walked out towards Reception to check the books out, she noticed the Narutaki twins giggling while looking at some books while sitting elbow to elbow at a nearby table. Normally, that wouldn't have interested Chisame an iota, but when she casually overhead the words, "Negi-kun's must be smaller," she abruptly turned around and stomped her way over to them.

"Okay, what's so funny about Sensei?" she growled, reaching down and grabbing the open book Fumika was holding. The pink haired twins screeched, but Chisame had already seen the illustration they had been looking at. Her face flushed red and her glasses fogged up before she turned her newly reborn outrage at the sisters. "What the hell is this?-!"

From another table, a tall and lanky man in dark clothes, with a crow perched on his shoulder, hushed them with a finger on his lips, stopping his own fascinated reading for a moment. Since Rance-sensei scared almost everyone - well, a certain Bookstore thought he was a nice person who liked books - the girls began talking in low, subdued tones.

"What does it look like?" Fuuka took the book and pointed at the anatomy diagram of a human penis. "It's a man's pee-pee. And Negi has one, just like every other man or boy, doesn't he?"

Chisame hissed. "Of course he does! But what's so funny about that, and why are you little sickos -"

Fuuka rolled her eyes. "Please, Chisame-chan. Much like the Boy Scouts or Batman, we must be prepared. Any moment now, Negi's man-needs will wake up."

"That's ridiculous. Sensei's only ten years old," Chisame grumbled. "He won't be thinking of that for years."

"Ah, but kids nowadays start thinking of that very early," Fumika pointed at another page, this one a wall of text only Hakase would have felt at ease with. "Look here, it says, with all the changes to our modern society and culture, they begin as young as Negi-kun or even younger."

Chisame frowned. "New Age nonsense."

"Oh really?" fumed Fuuka, who was one of those who had started even earlier. "Haven't you noticed the way Cocone-chan stares at Misora?"

"Everyone but Misora has noticed it. But what does that have to do with -" Chisame started, only to stop when she noticed Negi himself was heading their way from deeper inside the library. Muttering an awkward non-apology to the twins, Chisame tucked her books under an arm and all but flew out before Negi could see her.

Regardless, the seed of doubt already was planted inside of her.

It was to be the first of several seeds to be planted into her over the next few days.

* * *

_**Tuesday Morning:** _

The very next day, in fact, she slowly woke up in her bed, realizing almost as soon as she did so that she was not alone there. The sad thing was, she was almost used to it by now. Actually, it was sort of strange that Hakase was spending less time in the same bed as the two of them, since their return from Kyoto. Chisame supposed that she ought to be happy for her fr-er-roommate concerning the relationship upgrade between her and Sakurako, but being happy for people was not one of Chisame's things.

Happiness wasn't really Chisame's thing, when you got down to it.

But it was a little weirdly comforting to feel her boy teacher pressed up against her, as though seeking warmth and caring, even though he was rubbing up against her in very -

And then, quite abruptly, she realized in what way he was rubbing up against her, and with a delicate, girlish shriek, she shoved him out of bed.

"Eh?" he said, as the sudden stop at the end of the fall woke him up. "What, what just happened?

Chisame, who was quietly pretending to still be asleep, said nothing.

* * *

Later that morning, things seemed more or less overall the same as always in Classroom 3-A. Kaede sat taking a nap, but since she tended to be quiet and her eyes were always "closed" anyway, no one noticed the difference. Chao and Hakase took extensive notes on everything. Evangeline stared out a window indolently. A bird sat on top of Zazie's head chirping musically.

Yes, the same as always.

Yet the whole world felt fully different for Chisame now. The early morning's incident wouldn't leave her head no matter what, and how could it? Should she confront Negi about it? The brat probably wouldn't even know what she was saying, and even if he knew, he'd only freak out. Still, sooner or later, he'd wake up one of these days to feel it himself. She needed to be ready for that. But how?

Telling the other Ministra would only lead to disaster, she was sure of that. Even Sora didn't have enough mental maturity to handle it.

Looking at the pages of her Neo Horizon textbook without actually reading from it, Chisame struggled to death with every idea and fear in her mind. Okay, first of all, she needed to learn more about men's parts and how they worked. Not that she had an actual interest in that sort of thing. Still, it should be easy; she was the Mistress of the Internet, and wasn't the Internet the biggest depository of adult material in the world?

Yeah, she could do that, she decided. She'd just let her sprites do the searching for her until they told her of the exact target and where to find it. There had to be something somewhere about how handling someone's first erection.

Her blood froze then, as she felt him standing right next to her. "Chisame-san? Chisame-san, your turn," he gently asked, giving her one of those smiles that were so sickeningly sweet.

"Ah, ah, oh yes, sure," Chisame coughed, standing up with the book open in her hands. "Page 42, right?"

"43," he corrected her. "The third and fourth paragraphs."

"Y-Yes, I knew that. My tongue slipped." She grumbled and began reading in English. _"We lived near the town, in an old home inherited from our grandfather. Father had just died last year, but his pension was enough to cover most of our basic needs."_

She took a weary breath in and continued.  _"My brother quickly got a job at the Post Office, but I had to stay at school. There were few children of my age around, so I led a solitary existence for three full years. Until one day, we were met by a bearded old man -"_

Negi held a hand up, still smiling. "That'll be enough, Chisame-san. We'll let Misa-san supply the climax of this story. Thanks for your long, hard work. You've come out on top of your previous limitations."

"Oh, um, well, yeah, thanks," Chisame mumbled. Damn his praise. Why should she care about it, or his approval?

"You hit the key point rather well," Negi nodded. "You really have learned how to use your tongue when handling English. See? All those long sessions of reading and practice had a pay off!"

Wait, why did it all sound so strangely suggestive?

"I look forward to seeing more of you at this level in the future."

Even that kind of came out slightly wrong.

"Remember!" he said. "Together, we can do anything! All of us! I'm sure our hard work will bear fruits very soon!"

Chisame couldn't hold herself back anymore as his smiling face came closer. It would have been very comforting to someone who wasn't on the edge already.

Her? She barely noticed it herself when her right fist balled itself up and flew through the air to meet his face. To be honest, the first things she fully realized were the horrified gasps of her classmates.

Even Asuna's.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Chisame found herself seated on a bench, face palming. Well, technically, she didn't find herself; that was where Chizuru and Natsumi found her, by what everyone involved decided to pretend was chance.

"Good afternoon, Chisame-san," Chizuru said politely as she walked up to the depressed looking girl. "One hopes that you're feeling better than you were this morning. When you punched our teacher through a plate glass window."

A set of bushes near the bench quivered for some reason.

"Why did you feel compelled to remind me of what happened?" Chisame asked, still obviously upset.

"Perhaps I am motivated by moral indignation," Chizuru said, giving the matter a certain amount of thought. "Or I may have had other reasons."

Quiver, quiver went the bushes.

"Anyway!" interjected Natsumi, who found the tone of this conversation to be far too anxious. "What brought that on, anyway?"

"It's typical harem hijinx," Chisame muttered, not meeting Natsumi's eyes.

"No, not really," Natsumi, who had a surprisingly deep understanding of genre. "Generally, that sort of thing is provoked by an action undertaken by the male character, and all Negi-kun did was offer you a compliment on your translation. Right?"

"Okay," Chisame said, leaning back and glaring at the two of them. "You're not going to let up until I tell all, are you? It baffles me that I'd confess this, particularly to you two, but still ..." She began to quietly mutter, causing the two of them to lean closer to hear.

So did the bush.

"What?" Ayaka shrieked a moment later as she burst from said bush. "You fiend, Hasegawa! It's bad enough that you sleep in the same bed as our beloved teacher, but to do so in such a lewd manner as to provoke him to have an erection!"

"Oh, Ayaka. What a pleasant surprise," said Chizuru, smiling warmly.

"Chizu-nee, no one is buying that you didn't know she was there when you started -"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Natsumi-chan," Chizuru said, looming over the petite actress, who promptly zipped her lip.

"Where did you learn how to hide in the bushes and spy on people, anyway?" Chisame asked. Anything to keep her mind away from the main subject at hand.

"Th-That isn't an important at all! I learned it, and that's all what matters!" Ayaka protested.

* * *

Elsewhere, at Yukihiro Manor, Fubuki, the lead maid, stood with her arms folded before a stone faced and sitting Roberta. "So, espionage, infiltration, gunplay, knife-fighting, chemical warfare, sabotage and code-breaking. Anything ELSE you have taught Ojou-sama without telling me first that I should know about?"

Roberta went over the demolitions, camouflage, jeep driving, kickboxing and basic capoeira lessons in her head.

"Nothing else at all," she lied, as convincingly as someone used to enduring interrogation under torture in the jungle. (Which, you know, she had.)

* * *

"I didn't do a damn thing to provoke ... that," Chisame protested, trying her very best to keep from shouting. The class rep was going to attract enough attention all by herself, she didn't need any help. "I mean, he used to curl up against me -"

"Ngrgh!"

"- and my pajama top would get pulled open somehow -"

"Raaagh!"

"- and once one of my nipples was in his mouth -"

"Nyyahh!"

"- and ... but there wasn't any of that, this time," Chisame said, changing pace to stop Ayaka from having some sort of stroke. "He just had a -"

"Boner," supplied Natsumi. "What?"

When they stopped staring, Ayaka regarded Chisame while chewing on her thumb. "There's only one explanation. This must be the dreaded mourning wood. And as you can no doubt guess from the name ... it can be  _fatal_. And thus cause mourning, you see."

"Uh, that's not -" Chizuru started to say.

Chisame had gone pale. "You mean, it's actuallly ... he's really in pain when that happens?"

"Yes!" Ayaka confirmed. "Something must be done!"

 _I should say something,_  thought Chizuru.  _I should say something now, before things go too far. I should really say something!_

"Yes, something must be done!" Chizuru said.

_... oh dear._

"Where did you hear about this 'mourning wood', by the way?" Natsumi asked Ayaka, curiously.

"I have trusty sources on everything a woman in love - I mean, pure and sincere platonic love - needs to know to look after the health of a growing young man," replied the heiress. "Believe me, I was informed in depth and without any room for confusion!"

* * *

Back at Yukihiro Manor, Fubuki-san turned to another maid, a busty one with short black hair. "And you, Siesta-san, if I'm not mistaken, have seen fit to inform Ojou-sama about certain aspects of human sexuality."

"She asked, I just gave her the simple truth," Siesta shrugged.

"You know Ojou-sama is naive, and she tends to misinterpret things," Fubuki chided her. "Exactly what did you tell her?"

Siesta scratched the back of her neck. "Well..."

The other maids stared coldly at her. Even the normally friendly and innocent Taeko.

"I just told her what men tend to like," Siesta laughed nervously.

Fubuki had paled just a bit. "I thought you and Saito-san still hadn't..."

Rock walked past them, with bags under his eyes, a cigarette in his mouth and several sheets of documents in the process of being filled under an arm. He poured himself a glass of orange juice, drank it quickly, and shuffled back to do even more accounting.

"Oh, yes, that." Fubuki coughed uneasily. "I had started to forget those time."

"I'll never forget ..." Fabiola said with a wistful smile.

"Try harder," Fubuki retorted without a glance in Fabiola's direction. 

"For the record, I never said Saito-kun and I haven't done it yet," Siesta said.

Everyone stared at her again.

"What?" Siesta asked. "I said 'What MEN tend to like', didn't I? Plural!"

* * *

_**And so, that very night ...** _

"There's nobody else in there, right?" Negi asked as Chisame slowly surveyed the huge bath from its sliding door, wearing her swimsuit.

"Not yet there isn't," she muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said, no, no, there isn't."

"Oh." He was a bit confused about why she was muttering instead of making direct statements, but this was largely overwhelmed by his appreciation for the fact that, for once, he was not being dragged into their room's small shower for his bath this evening.

Now that they were occupying a public space, surely, surely the prospect that someone might come in at any time would hold Chisame-san back from her usual habit of tearing off his clothes and scrubbing him with faintly maniacal force. He would be able to splash about to his heart's content, avoiding utterly the need for the soap and other supposedly hygenic products in the bucket that he was carrying.

The fact that she'd been the one to propose this notion was a bit confusing, though. Perhaps he should make a subtle reference to the oddity. "Chisame-san, why did you ask me to join you in the bath?"

"Well. Um. You see ..." And here she trailed off, looking down at him from behind glasses that were starting to get a little foggy.

"Yes?" he asked.

"Ah, Negi-sensei! What a pleasant meeting!" said Ayaka as she casually strolled in through the door, followed closely by Chizuru and a slightly depressed-looking Natsumi, all dressed in their best swimsuits.

"Eh? Iinchou! Uh, well, hello, this is sort of a surprise, isn't it?" Negi asked, having a terrible feeling of impending doom.

Ayaka started to nod, then paused, and shook her head. "No, sensei, it's not a surprise. You see, Hasegawa-san told us that you would be here, and we arranged to come here at the same time."

"Ehhh? What, why would you do that?"

And then Ayaka's hands were firmly on his shoulders. "Negi-sensei ... this is an intervention," she announced.

Negi blinked, considering the idea of saying, "Eh" in a confused tone yet again. But the repetition bothered him, so all that he did was gape bewilderedly.

"Hasegawa-san has told us about your little problem, you see, and we want to help you. Isn't that right?" she asked Chizuru and Natsumi.

Natsumi coughed and looked aside, blushing brightly, while Chizuru smiled pleasantly as she nodded. No one could tell that somewhere inside her she was torn between laughing her fool head off and screaming a desperate warning.

"She did? Well ... well, thank you, Iinchou, but I really can't possibly accept this kind and well-meant offer. The situation has involved far too many of your classmates already, and -"

" _It has?_ " Ayaka almost shrieked. "Um. I mean, perhaps we should sit down in the bath and discuss this calmly and and reasonably."

"Well, all right, but I'm not going to -" Negi started to say, turning to walk towards the bath.

"For shame, sensei!" Ayaka said, stopping him rather forcefully. "I can only shake my head in dismay that your caregivers haven't explained basic bathing etiquette to you. A large number of people will be using that bath, so it's important to get clean before you enter and start to soak!"  _It's really happening, it's really happening,_  Ayaka's interior monologue sang.  _Oh so glad am I that I started taking that nosebleed medication._  "Let me help you with that -"

Chisame watched, almost dazed by the sheer gall of Ayaka's actions, as the class representative sat Negi down on the portable plastic stool, facing away from her. Without even a momentary hesitation or trace of embarrassment, the tall blonde slid the straps of her Apsaras swimsuit down her arms to expose her surprisingly large breasts, then poured liquid soap on them, and began to work it into a lather, with Negi all unaware of her actions.

Despite herself, Chisame couldn't take her eyes off those boobs, even though she'd seen them before without thinking anything of them. The envy she was feeling was ridiculous, given her own not-exactly-humble endowment. And plenty of people liked her chest just the way it was, given that Chiu routinely beat out much bustier net idols in popularity contests. After all, bustiness was really just a sort of fatness, and people didn't want -

"Um, Chisame-san?" Natsumi said, breaking her somewhat frenetic line of thought. Chisame turned to look at the actress, who kept darting glances at Ayaka's boobs that were possibly even more envious than Chisame's had been. (However, she also glanced that way at Chisame and, of course, Chizuru. Chizuru was cheerfully oblivious as she watched Ayaka lather up, and ... wait, was that a line of drool coming out of her mouth? No, couldn't be.)

"Yes, what, what is it?" Chisame asked, to distract herself more than anything else.

"What did sensei mean when he said this situation has involved -"

"He probably thought she meant something else," she quickly and oh so quietly interrupted. "They're having two conversations at the same time."

"Oh," said Natsumi. Then, "What was his conversation -"

Chisame was about to interject with a shouted, "Look, an UFO!", showing just how desperate the situation was getting, when Natsumi herself broke off and said, "Oh my gosh, she's actually going through with it."

And sure enough, Ayaka had begun to rub her soapy chest up against Negi's back. From the sudden stiffness in the boy teacher's posture, he had quickly realized that something somewhat outside the realm of his experience was happening. "Um ... Iinchou -"

"Please, sensei," Ayaka interrupted. "Under the circumstances, you should probably call me Ayaka-san."

"Well, um, all right, I suppose a certain amount of informality is understandable under the, um, the circumstances, so, ah, Ayaka-san, uh, what -"

"Ayaka-chan would be nice too."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly -"

"Or even Ya-chan."

"Ya-chan?" Negi asked, confused.

"Ya-chan?" repeated all three of the other girls present.

Ayaka paused, blushing brightly. "Um, why don't we pretend that last bit didn't happen, all right? Because no one has ever called me Ya-chan, and even if they did I certainly never called anyone Su-chan, and if I did we definitely didn't kiss that one time under the branches of the tree right after we buried our time capsule, and, and, ummmm."

Chizuru felt a headache coming on, judging by the way that she was rubbing her forehead, or so it seemed to Chisame.

"Oookay," said Negi, glad to be getting away from this strange topic. "Anyway, I can't help but notice that you, you, you don't seem to be using a cloth while you're, um, washing me."

"Very perceptive, sensei," Ayaka said, also relieved to have that digression ended. "I am not using a cloth."

"Ah. Well, um, forgive me for saying so, Ayaka-san, but is this really, well, I mean, hygenic? Or appropriate?"

"It's very hygienic," she assured him. "This sort of thing is quite common, it seems. There's actually quite a large number of businesses where it is done commercially, or so my sources assure me." (Well, actually, all that Siesta had told her, when she'd asked her whether men really liked being bathed like this, was that there were places where they paid to have it happen. But it followed that there had to be quite a few of them. Simple economics.) "Surely the government wouldn't permit there to be a business where people could become sick from the business?

"And, as to its appropriateness, I think it's very appropriate for us to establish a relationship that accepts contact between our skins, or skinship as it sometimes known. After all, there is so much you do not know about the ways in which people in this country are supposed to behave, and yet there are also so many things that you do know that I don't know, and, and, and therefore -"

She could stand it no more. With surprising strength, she whirled Negi around so that he was facing her, and as his eyes went wide at the sight of her topless body, she pressed up against him, and said, almost singing, "So teach me, sensei, as I am teaching youuuuu-"

"Ooooo-kayyyy!" said Chisame as she interrupted this fairly directly by shoving Ayaka off of and away from a paralyzed, quivering Negi. The rich girl flew away, landing in the pool with a squawk interrupted by a splash. "That'll be enough of that! The idea was to get him comfortable enough to talk about his problem and -" She broke off, glancing down.

Yep. There it was, lifting up the fabric of his shorts.

"- annnnd a certain someone has actually caused the problem!"

"This is very embarassing," Negi said quietly.

"Oh wow," said Natsumi, staring at it as she had not stared at any of the breasts on display. "That's, that's mourning wood?"

"Yes, although it's evening," Chizuru said faintly.

"Eh? What was that?"

"Nothiiiing."

"Does it, does it hurt?" Chisame asked, irritation slowly fading into concern.

"Well, yes," Negi admitted. He would really have preferred to be alone so that he could take down his shorts, which had become rather confining. "But, you know, it's all right, Chisame-san, it will get better eventually, and - Chisame-san? Why are you staring at me?"

"Because you're doing it again, aren't you?" Chisame growled.

"Doing what?" Negi asked, smiling broadly.

"You're doing that 'I deserve to suffer' thing again! That 'don't worry about my trauma, I'm all right as long as my students are okay' thing again! That incredibly selfish selflessness thing again! God, that thing you do!" Chisame snarled, clenching her teeth in a rather frightening way.

"'Selfish selflessness'?" asked Chizuru, eyebrows raised.

"Like pretending you're not in love with someone because you don't want to risk losing them as a friend," explained Natsumi, who was, as has already been mentioned, rather genre savvy. Then she looked sideways at Chizuru. "Not that  _anyone_  here knows  _anything_  about that." In addition to being genre savvy, she was a lot sharper than most people realized.

While Chizuru was momentarily incapacitated by an inexplicable bout of coughing, Ayaka surged up out of the pool, the top of her swimsuit still hanging around her waist.. "It's not okay, sensei!" she cried. "Even if it does go down on its own, the toxins remain!"

"Toxins?" Negi asked, starting to look a little frightened.

"Certainly! Just as when you become tired, it is because toxins have built up in your bloodstream, and so is it with this condition! With those toxins, you have to rest to let them run their course, but these ones, the ones that are causing you pain right now, sensei, they will remain in your system, building up each time, until finally - there is cause for mourning!" Ayaka concluded in a hollow tone.

"And you're sure about this?" Chisame demanded. "This isn't something that you've completely misinterpreted?"

"I am sure!" said Ayaka, who was occasionally in error, but never in doubt.

"I had no idea that such things could happen," Negi said faintly. Ayaka was not the most gullible person in the room, after all.

"Okay, then," said Natsumi, looking as grimly determined as a cute girl with freckles can look. "We've got to do something to help sensei relieve that pressure, since it's mostly our fault for surprising him like this, right?"

"Well-spoken, Natsumi-chan!" Ayaka praised her.

"Theatre girl is right," agreed Chisame.

"Wait - theatre girl?"

"So we'd better all follow Ayaka's example, and get naked," Chisame said, suiting her actions to her words. She was acutely aware as she did so that Negi was staring at her, eyes almost popping out of their sockets. Apparently, he really did think of her as a girl, not just as a replacement for his older sister. She'd wondered, sometimes.

Of course, the possibility that he thought of his older sister in that way never even slightly crossed her mind.

Very quickly, they were all nude, as was Negi. The relief he'd expected to feel from the release of his burden didn't materialize, though, given the nervousness he felt from his surroundings and the prospect of a horrible death.

"So," said Ayaka. "I think we should janken for who does what, as that seems -"

Chisame ignored her and hesitantly reached out to wrap her small hand around his thing. (She was familiar with several of the slang terms, but refused to even think about them at a time like this.) Her hand bumped into Natsumi's hand, on the same mission. They paused to glance at each other. With almost perfect synchronization, they lowered their hands onto it together and began rubbing.

Negi's breathing got faster as they rubbed.

"Okay," Chisame asked, swallowing. "Is this, is this good, or bad? You're going to have to tell us, you know, because, well, I have no idea what I'm doing, do you, the-"

"Natsumi," the girl interrupted.

"Right, right, sorry."

"It's very, very good, Chisame-san," Negi told her. "A lit-little frightening, but very, very good."

 _Arrggh!_  thought Ayaka, wishing she had a handkerchief she could tear at with her teeth. She wanted to be involved in this more than anything, but Negi's thing - his cute thing! - was almost too small for two hands, let alone three! What could she do?

"Try licking it," Chizuru suggested faintly, sitting a little bit removed from the three of them, rather than being pressed up against them. "I've, I've heard that some men like that sort of -"

Ayaka promptly bent down and began to gently lick at the tip of the thing, just above Chisame's hand, making Negi gasp and widening the eyes of the other two girls.

 _How odd,_  Chizuru thought.  _I had no idea that I could enjoy voyeurism so much. When I was watching -_  But this was not the time for such thoughts, as Ayaka's tongue swirled around the foreskin like a dancer on stage.

Chisame, a bit stunned that Ayaka was going there and so quickly, jerked her hand away when that tongue brushed up against it. Ayaka promptly seized the opportunity and opened her mouth wide enough to take the thing's head into it, did so, and begin to suck. Natsumi also pulled away as she saw the class rep doing that.

A glance at Negi's face told Chisame that he'd barely even noticed that they'd stopped. _Typical, just typical,_ she thought bitterly. _Doesn't care who's doing what to him as long as -_ And then she saw tears glistening in Ayaka's eyes as she moved her head back and forth, and she throttled the bitterness momentarily. The crazy girl was so painfully happy right now, it almost hurt to watch.

Perhaps Ayaka picked up on all this, for she pulled back, took a deep breath, and spoke. "I'm being very selfish, aren't I? Please ... let us, let us all do it. That's only, only fair, isn't it?"

Chisame swallowed, and opened her mouth to reply.

"Thank you, Iinchou," said Natsumi. As someone had once observed, it paid to be a little more dere than than tsun. Or at least be faster on the draw. In any event, her head was soon bowed beside Ayaka's, both of them licking at the top of the unit, and its tiny hole.

Chisame found herself wanting to scream. There wasn't enough room for all three of them to crowd around the tiny thing, so she was left hanging there, just watching the other two. It wasn't right! And no matter how much she tried to tell herself that this was all for Negi's benefit, it was obvious that the two girls who did have a clear shot at his thing were really really enjoying having that, while she sat back and rubbed her own -

Wait, when had she started masturbating? She was masturbating in front of Negi! Her left hand was down between her legs, rubbing at the bumps and holes and walls there, while her right was pinching one of her nipples, all in front of the little brat! Of course, he didn't notice, the jerk, being wrapped up in what Ayaka and Natsumi were doing to him, not that she wanted him to look at her and see what she was doing for want of him, not that she did want him and -

Then she felt firm hands resting on her butt.

"Oh, Chisame-san," cooed Chizuru's voice from behind her, as the motherly girl's breasts pressed against her shoulder blades. "That's so sad, seeing you sitting there masturbating like this. It's just not right."

"Well, well, well, I mean, this is all for Negi's benefit, right?" Chisame stammered. "It's not about, uh, me, or -"

"But it's only natural to want to feel good, isn't it?" Chizuru continued to murmur right into her ear as her hands slowly slid from Chisame's buttocks to her hips. "Everyone likes to feel good, after all. It's the most basic of all human urges."

 _Oh, not again,_ thought Chisame with the part of her mind that wasn't busily panicking. _This is just like Haruna beneath Library Island!_

* * *

"Well, that was a great movie, Rito-kun! I had a lot of fun tonight!" And Haruna's smile was so cheerful and filled with life, Rito remembered why he'd fallen in love with her in the first place.

"Um, well, glad to hear it." He tried to laugh, with a hand behind his neck. "I'm sorry about Lala, but I'm sure she meant no harm -"

Haruna broke into actual laughter. "Are you kidding? Lala-chi was the best part of the night! God, I never laughed that much before! Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but I must go now. Ku-chan must be worried sick."

Even Rito couldn't help but express disbelief at that. "Really?"

"Well, no, but I like pretending she cares."

"I'll walk you there!" he offered, as nervously as ever.

She shook her head. "Nah, Mikan-chan must be waiting for you, and she  _is_  sure to be worried."

"I'll give her a call -"

"You know she'll want to have dinner with you," Haruna patted his shoulder. "She's at that age when kids need emotional support, and all that jazz. Don't worry, you know I can take care of myself."

"All right ..."

As usual, she kissed him first. He posed less token resistance and embarrassment this time, which pleased her. She'd make a man of him yet, by golly! Eventually...

Saotome Haruna skipped her merry way through the campus, without a care in the world, thinking of merry things best not mentioned, until her right foot was caught on something large and sticky in a lonely portion of the main boulevard. She almost fell, supporting herself against a nearby tree and accidentally placing her other foot into another sticky mess in the night shadows.

 _Oh, great. If Dad could see me now ..._  "What the heck is this?" she said aloud, pulling a foot free while her right hand absently fished for her Pactio card in her top. Her senses went into alert, trying to detect any likely enemy coming from any direction. All the while, she looked at the substance that had briefly trapped her feet. It was all over her shoes, and looked like an extraordinary amount of spider webbing. "Ew. Don't tell me it's one of those Witch or Orphan things."

"Having problems?" a voice asked, and she looked in that direction, tense and ready to fight if necessary. But after the newcomer stepped out into the faint light of the street lamps, Haruna breathed easier.

"Ah, it's you, Nao-chan."

She hadn't ever traded more than a few words with Rito and Mikan's cousin, but she knew the girl's reputation well. It was far worse than her own, since Nao-chan actually dated men. In the 'compensated dating' sense. She had been close to being expelled from Mahora a few times, but she always was saved by a lack of conclusive evidence. Some, like Misa, said it also was due to the fact she had a lot of dirt on people in high places. Even respected teachers.

"Yo. Good evening there," Nao waved lazily, her steps calculated and yet careless. "Fancy meeting you here. Had fun with Rito-kun?"

"Like always!" Haruna smiled. "You having a pleasant night?"

Nao waved a hand. "I guess I can't complain, since I was out doing what I like best."

Haruna felt a strange sensation of uneasiness at that. "Ah, well, then. What else could we ask from life?"

"I dunno. I could ask for some other things, too." Nao folded her arms.

Haruna noticed her expression shifting from indifferent to stern, and her own face matched it. "Okay," the mangaka said. "Let's stop pretending, then. What do you want?"

"Nothing, really. It isn't about what I want; I can get that myself, and I do. It's about what Rito-kun wants. And more importantly, what he needs."

"I'm afraid you'll have to be more -"

"Listen," the redhead told her. "I know I can't pass judgement on anyone, and I wouldn't care a shit about your life if you weren't involved with Rito-kun. But you are, and that changes everything. I'll be honest and cut through the crap; I don't want you hurting Rito."

"Why would I ever hurt -"

Nao interrupted her again. "I know your type. You shoot around in all directions, always looking for nothing more than fun. Rito isn't the kind of man who can keep up with that. Don't get me wrong, men are scum -"

"Doesn't stop you from dating them," Haruna interrupted her this time.

"Why should it? I just take what I want from them. But Rito-kun is different. Maybe it's because he isn't much of a man, but he's ... different. He's a good kid."

"A kid? He's older than either of us!"

Nao tapped on her own head with a finger. "He's still a kid where it counts. If you make him suffer with your crap, I swear I'll take it out of your hide, you hear me?" she outright threatened. "Because you won't be only hurting him, but Mikan-chan too. And I don't give a flying crap about anyone else, but no one messes with my family."

Haruna smiled. It was a fake smile, but she was pretty good at those. "Oh! That's pretty serious talk from someone else who only looks for fun!"

"My case's different," Nao shrugged. "I don't do my thing only for fun. But that's no biz of yours. If I hear that you've started dating someone else for real behind Rito's back, like that twerp teacher you and your gang spend so much time around, I'll find you wherever you are. And it won't be pretty."

Haruna looked at her eyes the way only a Saotome could. "Good thing, then, I don't have any intentions of hurting Rito-kun's feelings."

"It's not about your intentions. Even if you do it without meaning it, I'll still go after you. Bad enough he's got that pink haired bimbo after him, he doesn't need your crap messing him up too."

Both girls stared at each other intensely before Nao began backing away. "Mikan-chan must be wondering about me by now. Good night, Paru-chan."

"Good night, Nao-chan," Haruna said in a matching tone.

After the shorter girl disappeared down the boulevard, paying Haruna the compliment of not turning away from her until she was out of sight, Haruna scooped some webbing up, sniffed it, scowled, and put it inside of her purse.

Maybe it'd be worth it to have Hakase analyze the darn thing...

* * *

There'd been a few rumors about Naba, and Chisame couldn't help hearing them. Frankly, she'd been inclined to dismiss them, thinking that they'd gotten her confused with a certain similarly named Student Council President, who did things that encouraged those sorts of stories. But now they were naked together, and Chizuru's hands were moving down Chisame's hips, and there didn't really seem to be any possible doubt that her intentions were -

And then Chizuru made her intentions perfectly clear, and while they were apparently somewhat different from what Chisame had been expecting, that wasn't much of a comfort. For her intention appeared to be to pick Chisame up and hold her in mid-air as she stood up and walked over to Negi's head.

 _How in the hell is she this strong?_  Chisame thought bewilderedly. She was too terrified to try and wiggle free, much less voice a protest.

"Oh, Negi-kuun," Chizuru cooed as she reached her destination. "It's very selfish to just lie back and let people do things to you. Now, sometimes very selfish people can be lovable nonetheless ... but you don't want to be that sort of person, do you?"

"Uh, uh, well," Negi managed to get out.

"Of course not," Chizuru agreed, having learned that it was easiest to get people to agree when they had no idea was going on and distracted by other matters. A very selfish but nonetheless lovable person had taught her that. And now she put that theory into practice by slowly lowering Chisame's hindquarters towards Negi's face. "So you need to start doing unto others," she told him.

"Wait, no, this isn't, this is all for him, not for -"

"Mm-hm, shut up, dear." She pressed Chisame's vulva to his mouth. "Start licking, Negi-kun. Actually, you might also want to try tilting your head back so that your tongue can reach the little starfish that's just behind this - you're looking at it, right? She'll really like that."

"What are you telling him to dooooo?" Chisame protested as Negi began to follow Chizuru's advice.

"I would think, after having him live with you for so long, that you'd enjoy having him being a bit of a kiss-ass, Chisame-san," Chizuru murmured coolly, and just loud enough for Chisame to hear.

 _Gahhhh!_  Chisame thought. More coherent observations temporarily escaped her.

 _Gahhhh!_  Ayaka thought, watching this from below as she licked at the unit while Natsumi experimented with sucking. However, her observations quickly achieved coherence.  _That lucky wench, to be licked in that manner by Negi-sensei's cute tongue! And the betrayal, too!_ The way that Chizuru had just gone and picked Chisame up and carried her about, and was now pressed up against the other girl, and whispering into and maybe even licking her ear, _and and and why are my thoughts going in this direction?_

 _Wow,_  thought Natsumi, with what even she realized was unusual coherence.  _Chisame is really enjoying herself. Having a boy do that to you must feel really, really good, if someone so usually frowny-faced is liking it that much._  The hand that wasn't below her lips, on Negi-sensei's dick - for Natsumi had no objection to slang - crept down between her own legs to start petting her kitten.

 _Gahhhh!_  Negi thought.  _It's, it's about to, I should really warn them, somehow, but, but my mouth, it's full, and, and - gahhhh!_

Just as Natsumi relinquished her liplock on the top of his thing to begin sliding down the right side of it, carefully avoiding bringing her tongue into contact with the class rep's tongue, it convulsed, before shooting forth, in quick succession, three torrents of a gooey white substance up into the air, from whence it rained down on all five who were gathered closely together at the side of the pool.

 _This is Sensei's semen. It's really happening,_  thought Ayaka as some of the fluid dripped into her mouth. And then she thought it again, and again and again and again. The words ran around inside her skull, capering madly and laughing their figurative heads off. All the while, she crouched there with a very odd smile on her face.

Meanwhile, Natsumi was looking down at the mild mess that had fallen on her. She'd heard vague rumors that this stuff was supposed to be good for one's skin, but somehow she doubted it was going to do anything for her freckles. It didn't smell too bad, at least. She wondered how it tasted. But not enough to bring it up to her mouth, unlike some people.

"Some people", of course, was how Natsumi was thinking of Chizuru, who had delicately rubbed a finger against where it had landed on her cheek, then just as delicately brought the finger tip to her mouth and licked at it. _I am tasting the emission of a ten year old boy,_ she thought calmly. _This is beyond any doubt the most depraved thing I've ever done. And yet all I feel is a certain wonder as to what it would be like to drink from the source, and amusement at the sight of - wait._

For her part, Chisame barely noticed the white rain dropping on her, as her attention was utterly given to the strange sensations that Negi's tongue was provoking as it slid and pressed and gently caressed her nether areas. It was a vaguely familiar sensation; she'd felt like this once when she'd been driven to masturbate after realizing just how many people were out there watching and thinking and probably masturbating themselves to pictures of Chiu. And yet that had only like this, for there was also a feeling of a complete loss of control that was utterly unlike anything she'd ever felt before.

She didn't want to like it. She thrived on control. The whole purpose of Chiu was to allow her to control the way that people saw her, after all. And every step she'd taken into the magical craziness that was her life had been taken with the intention that she could learn how to control the craziness so it wouldn't bother her quite so much. But nonetheless, there was something wonderful about just letting go ...

Of course, she was promptly reminded that letting go could be somewhat painful. For Chizuru released her grip on her so that she also slumped down to the deck beside Negi's body, allowing him to breathe freely, but the speed of the slump was enough to provoke a mild "ouch" from Chisame.

Chizuru paid her no mind. "It's still erect," she murmured as she gazed down at what was still erect. Good grief, did the boy actually have some sort of condition? Priapism, in one so young? This was no laughing matter!

Ayaka managed to regain enough self-possession to lift her head and look at the still erect member. "Goodness," she said, clearly startled. Siesta hadn't mentioned anything about this, but maybe it was something the experienced woman had simply assumed that Ayaka would automatically understand. "Does it only go down if it has experienced actual intercourse?"

The question hung in the air for a few moments.

 _This time, I have to say something,_  thought Chizuru.  _Their confusion about the function of the male organism has passed out of the realm of innocent folly and into dangerous territory. Yes, yes, I will say something._

"That could be ..." And then she trailed off, unsure of how to express the notion beyond that.

_What is wrong with me?_

"Very well, then I will, for Negi-sensei's sake, take this burden -" said Ayaka as she started to get to her feet.

"Um, no, wait, Iinchou ... you shouldn't have to do that," Natsumi interrupted as she also started to get to her feet. "You have a responsibility to your family, and you should save yourself for marriage, so I -"

"Don't be absurd, Natsumi-chan," Ayaka interrupted right back. "Among persons of my class, it is well understood that marriage is about finance and diplomacy, not such trivial considerations. But they are far more important among people such as yourself, so -"

"But I'm probably never going to get married, because I'll be pursuing a career in the theatre, so there won't be a chance to get married, and anyway theatre people don't care about that sort of thing, so I should be -"

"But it's far too great a sacrifice to ask that of you, Natsumi-chan." Hiss! went Ayaka's eyes.

"Oh, no, the sacrifice would be far greater for you, Iinchou." Myaaa! went Natsumi's eyes.

 _Good grief, they're actually on the verge of having a catfight about this,_  Chisame thought wearily. Who'd have expected Natsumi to be this tough-minded? The situation would have been so much easier if there was someone sweet and biddable involved instead of these two. Someone like maybe Bookstore? Chisame shook her head, realizing that girl would be too shy for this sort of thing.

* * *

While white petals flew all around them, Miyazaki Nodoka pulled herself free from the grasp of the gently smiling woman with curls who had forced her to dance with her, and placed the Clow Staff against her forehead.

"Return to your original form! Clow Card!" Nodoka shouted. Still smiling, the woman was pulled back into a small card form, which floated down into Nodoka's waiting hand.

"The Flower," Nodoka read aloud from it.

"Well, what else could have it been?" Yue walked closer, brushing petals off herself and turning her video camera off. "You okay, Nodoka?"

"Of course she's okay! She did a great job!" Kerberos flew around his protégé's head. "You caught The Flower in a record time, Nodoka!"

"Thanks," the shy girl smiled while writing her own name on the back of the card. "So, Kero-san, what does this card do?"

"It creates flower petals out of nowhere," Kero said.

"And what else?" Yue asked.

"That's it," said the plush lion.

"Seriously?" Nodoka sounded disappointed.

"That isn't going to be of much help in fights," Yue observed.

"Well, not all of them can be powerhouses," Kero shrugged. "Master Clow didn't create them to be artifacts of war."

They left the deserted shooting range behind, glad to leave before anyone could see them, or any damage had been done to the place.

"You know," Yue said while checking the film they'd give Haruna. To be fully honest, Yue could understand Paru's hobby of watching Nodoka's exploits. She couldn't possibly call it creepy anymore, considering that she also kept copies for herself. "I've been thinking about it, Nodoka, and you really should push for your own Pactio."

Nodoka blushed and shook her head, without looking at Yue. "N-No, I couldn't! Negi-sensei already has too many partners to train, and I'd be a bother. B-Besides, like I can compare to them ... I mean, in how useful we can be for him, I mean, for his goals."

"Nonsense," Yue argued. "You saw how powerful that Psycho Purple-san's Artifact was. That's your destiny, Nodoka. And you know Negi-sensei will have need for that Artifact sooner or later."

"Maybe," Nodoka allowed softly. "But Yue, th-then you should get yourself a Pactio like Valkyrie Black-san's, too!"

Now it was Yue's turn to blush. "What? N-No! That's different! Your Artifact is unique, while mine -"

"You didn't get to see Valkyrie Black-san in action," the Card Captor reminded her. "She was an incredible fighter!"

"All the more reason to doubt I ever could fill that role," replied Yue.

"Are we having this conversation AGAIN?" Kero complained.

"Yue-Yue, she was just like you at first!" Nodoka said. "I'm sure you can be as useful in battle as Asuna-san, Suzushiro-sempai and Iinchou-san with enough effort!"

Her best friend looked away uneasily. "I couldn't be as good as them, because ... because I'm afraid," she confessed in a tiny voice.

And then Nodoka's hand was on her own.

"So am I," she heard Nodoka's own whispered admission. "But maybe, if we put both our fears together, we might find the courage to overcome them?"

After a moment of doubt, Yue squeezed the small warm hand in her own, and half-smiled.

"Who knows? Stranger things have happened."

"By the way," Nodoka said, looking around oddly. "Don't you feel sort of like we should be somewhere else now?"

"Yes, but also sort of like we've somehow dodged a bullet."

* * *

While the oh-so polite build-up to the inevitable slapping and hair-pulling continued, and with Chizuru watching in distracted confusion, Chisame rose up, unnoticed by any of them. "Okay," she said softly as she looked down at Negi from where she stood over him. "Negi ... let's feel good together, all right?"

"Okay," Negi said faintly.

And then, before anyone could do anything, she quickly sat down, using her hands to draw his thing up into her thing on the first try. She flinched, expecting the pain associated with first times that she'd heard about, but it was strangely absent. She briefly wondered whether he was just too small to break the barrier, but she could feel it pressing up against her insides, so warmly.

The sensation of warmth overpowered everything else. It made her fall forward over Negi, so that their faces were up against each other, and she found herself kissing him again. More deeply than when they'd established their pact. Their tongues rubbed together, even as his thing rubbed against her as her hips shifted over his.

Pulling away, with difficulty, she found herself gasping, "Does it, does it feel good, N-Negi?"

"Y-yes," he stammered. "It's much, much better than the other things."

 _GHRHAR!_  thought Ayaka.

 _GHRHAR!_  thought Natsumi.

 _Oh, he really needs better training in how to handle these sorts of situations,_  thought Chizuru with weary annoyance. Mastering that feeling, she focused on Chisame for the moment. "And how do you feel, Chisame-san? Does it hurt?"

"It's, it's -" Her natural impulse to deny that she felt good about anything or anyone warred with the feeling that an honest answer was called for. "It's not painful, not really at all," she stammered out.

That was perhaps not all that surprising, given all the physical activity that she'd been through since Negi came into their lives, probably more than she'd experienced in the previous fourteen years combined. Her hymen could easily have broken without her even realizing it.

"And it's, it's strange," Chisame continued. "But ... even though, he's inside me, it's like I'm the one inside h-him, because we're feeling the same thing, and it's, it's - huh?"

The blonde head at her right breast pulled back. "I WANT IN," Ayaka growled, before she returned to suckling at the nipple and teasing at the union of Chisame and Negi's bodies with her fingers. It stood to reason, didn't it, that if Chisame could have this sort of union with sensei by doing this, then by doing things with her, Ayaka would be doing them with both of them and experience that union too. It was simple logic!

And Chizuru clearly agreed with her logic, because she had bent down to begin mirroring Ayaka's actions on the other side of Chisame's body. Well, sort of mirroring. Actually, Chizuru seemed quite a bit more confident in the way that she licked and nipped at the meat of Chisame's breast, and the movements of her hand seemed more certain and sure. It was as though ...

Well. It wasn't any of Ayaka's business if she did this sort of thing. And after all, Siesta had told her that men rather enjoyed watching that sort of thing, as long as they got to participate eventually. From the rather stunned look on sensei's face, that was the case. Doubtless Chizuru had some experience in the area, that was all. And now Ayaka had some experience, and that was all. She certainly didn't have any thoughts about what it would be like to do this with any annoying monkey girls or -

"You're drooling again," Chizuru said as she pulled away momentarily.

"You're both drooling," Chisame complained. "You're ... both drooling ... all over my tits ... and your hands ... keep me from ... moving up and down ..." That was all that she could get out before her eyes went wide behind her glasses, as one of them slipped a finger up into her alongside Negi's hardness.

"Then I g-guess it's up to me," Negi said quietly.

"Huh?"

He began to move his own hips, beneath hers, pushing up and then pulling back. Not too quickly, and not with a great deal of force, but nonetheless he was moving, and Chisame was baffled at his experience.  _How does he know to do this? He was a virgin until a few minutes ago, right? And he's only ten! How does he know -_

The finger inside of her, the one rubbing against her walls and Negi's thing, began to move even faster, preventing Chisame from further considerations along this line. She made a few half-formed protests as both penetrations proceeded, but no one seemed inclined to heed her expressed requests to slow down or cut it out.

It was Negi who finally replied to them. "But, but Chisame-san ... right now ... you look so pretty ..."

Tears began to gather in her eyes as she groaned. "Oh, you little Casanova wannabe, you upstart, you you you -" But whatever else she might have called him was lost in the scream that suddenly came out of her throat.

Whether it was the mouths at her nipples, the hands on her lower body, that finger up in her or Negi's dick, Negi's sweet little dick that he clearly knew how to use, she didn't know and was well past caring. But something flipped the breaker that was holding back another orgasm, this one even more violent and exhausting than the one his tongue had given her. She rocked back until she thought her back was almost going to break, and screamed her pleasure to the ceiling.

And almost as an afterthought, her muscles and the pressure of the finger made Negi shoot another load up into her. The wet sensation within her made her rise up again and fall back, lying on the floor with her hands over her face, trembling with release and confusion.

Delicately, Chizuru raised one of her fingers to her mouth and slid it in up to its last knuckle.

 _Wow,_  thought Natsumi, as she watched, and rubbed herself absently.  _Just wow._

 _Mine,_  thought Ayaka. "Oh, dear, Negi-sensei, it still hasn't gone down!" she said, doing her level best to sound upset and not really succeeding.

"What?" Chisame managed to gasp, lifting the hands off of her eyes to see that, yes, what had been erect was still erect. "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me!" she groaned.

Natsumi started to stumble forwards to where Negi was half-lying, half-sitting on the deck. "Well, um, since I think I was going to win the argument earlier, I'll -"

"Don't be ridiculous, Natsumi-chan, I was well on my way to winning you over and -" Ayaka interjected as she also headed towards Negi's slumped position.

"AHEM," rasped Chizuru, not moving at all except to raise a hand to her mouth.

 _Oh, no_ , thought Natsumi and Ayaka, their thoughts moving more or less in complete synchronicity.  _I thought she was going to just stay back and watch, and maybe, um, well, anyway, if she's going to assert herself, she'll walk right over us and -_

With the hand that wasn't covering her mouth, Chizuru slowly raised up a finger - the same finger that she'd just licked clean a few moments ago, and pointed it at Ayaka. Before Natsumi could say a word in protest, though, Chizuru began to speak.

 _"Dore ni shiyou kana, tenno kami-sama no, iu toori ni, itashimashi you ne, peko peko aburamuushi,"_  she recited, moving the finger from Ayaka to Natsumi on each syllable of the children's poem. The final syllable saw it pointing straight at Natsumi.

"Thank you, Chizu-nee!" Natsumi shouted, spontaneously hugging her roommate, who smiled and hugged back, resisting the temptation to give Natsumi's cute little butt a nice firm squeeze again.

"Wait, isn't the mu in 'aburamushi' a short vowel rather than a long one?" Ayaka asked, frowning.

Chizuru looked at her patiently and in silence.

"... I am obviously mistaken," Ayaka said after a gulp.

"Um, um, Natsumi-san," Negi said, once the girl backed away from Chizuru and resumed her slow half-crawl towards him. "I'm sure that all this to have taken care of the poisons, so that I'll be okay for a while, so you don't have to do any of this ..." He trailed off as he saw her face.

"Yes, I know, but sensei, I want to do it," Natsumi said as she got closer. Like many statements, it was somewhere between a lie and a truth, for she was actually a bit frightened, but determinted to conquer her fears this time. Thinking of this, she continued. "Actually, actually, I wanted to say this when we went on that, to the temple in Kyoto, but I was too scared and upset and ..." Deeeeep breath. "I like you sensei!"

"Eh?" Negi said, eyes becoming black circles.

 _Only he would be surprised to get a confession like that at a time like this,_  Chisame mused from where she was still lying on the floor.

"I, I don't expect an answer, sensei," she said, as she closed the last of the distance. "I know that I'm not your type. I'm not anyone's type. I wish I was braver, and smarter, and sweeter, and had a higher voice, and less freckles, and bigger - well, and all sorts of things, but I'm the one who's here, now, so I'm going to help you, sensei. Because I like you."

And then she was on top of him, and reaching back to fumble with his thing and press it up against her entrance, and pushing back with her hips.

"Nagh!" Natsumi said, trembling in obvious pain.

"Ah!" Negi cried, recovering from his stunned paralysis. "Natsumi-san! Am I hurting you? We'll stop, it -"

"It's okay! It's okay!" she said, words escaping from between clenched teeth. "It really doesn't hurt all that much!" she lied, feeling the faint flow of blood on her thighs.

"Okay, then," Negi said. He began to somewhat hesitantly pump up at her. But the look of obvious pain and anxiety on her face didn't really diminish, and even someone who wanted to believe that everyone was always completely honest and forthright with him couldn't really miss the signs.

"We, we should stop," Negi said as he suited his actions to his words.

"No, no, sensei, it's okay, this is for your -" Natsumi started to say.

"Natsumi-san," Negi said, lifting a hand up to gently touch her face, which was spattered with tears. "I don't want to hurt someone who likes me."

That made the tears worse. "It's okay, I'm telling you, it's not like I matter all that much -"

"Natsumi," he interrupted. "You matter a lot to me." It was the truth, because they all did. And he lifted his head to kiss her lips, not too deeply, but soundly.

She moaned into the kiss, and felt a strange quivering below as she did. And as she slid off of him, there was a sudden strange wetness there, too.

"Uh?" Natsumi said as she looked down at the whiteness. "Sensei, did you -?"

"I guess," he said, uncertainly.

 _He did that when we stopped doing it,_  Natsumi thought confusedly.  _Should that make me feel good or bad?_

Ayaka was practically shaking as she crawled over to Negi while Natsumi sort of rolled away from him. "It's my turn, right, sensei?"

"Um, well," Negi said, glancing down at his unit. It was drooping but still what most people would probably call erect. The closeness of Ayaka's form and the equally naked need in her eyes was raising it up from that, in any event. But he nonetheless felt obligated to at least try. "I really don't think -"

"But it's my turn," Ayaka said, with a note of plaintiveness in her voice.

"But, well, you know, I've, I've done this three times already this evening, and -"

"Senseiiiii," Ayaka whined. "Do you really not care about me at all, then?"

"That's not true at all!" he objected anxiously. "But -"

"Then fuck me! Fuck me fuck me fuck me pleeeease?" she asked, hands clasped in front of her breasts and eyes swimming with tears right on the edge of trickling down her cheeks.

Negi still held back, both because he was a bit stunned at the sudden profanity from the incredibly proper young woman and because he was really unsure about all of this. But then he felt a pair of firm hands pushing his shoulders up from where he lay looking at Ayaka on her knees.

"I think you'd better do as she requests, sensei," said Chizuru, and if she was experiencing any of the mild dismay she'd shown earlier at his interactions with Ayaka, it didn't appear on her face. As with another beautiful woman, her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.

"Well," Negi gulped. "All right, then."

"Yaaay!" Ayaka cheered giddily, clapping her hands for a moment, before she lay down and spread her legs and arms, looking up at him with a blissful expression on her face. "Come to me, sensei," she said breathily.

This was a bit different than anything he'd done up to this point; every previous encounter had been with the female atop him, rather than vice versa. But despite his anxieties, he was able to complete the required maneuvers, lodging his unit within Ayaka's tight crevice. He couldn't avoid giving a grunt as he did so, however.

"Is it good?" she asked somewhat anxiously.

"Yes, it's, it's just very tight, much tighter than the others."

 _What?_  thought Chisame.

 _Whaaaaat?_  thought Natsumi.  _I was a virgin, for Pete's sake!_

 _Score one for Kegel exercises! I knew they'd come in handy someday!_  thought Ayaka.  _Thank you Roberta-san! Thank you Siesta-san!_

Eventually, Negi began to work his hips, pushing the unit back and forth within her. Owing to the class representative's height, he wasn't able to bring his face up to hers, and their positioning didn't allow her to bend herself so that she could come down to him. So his head rested at the level of her breasts, and to keep his mouth occupied, he took one of the nipples in his mouth.

"Aaah!" Ayaka cried out as he did so, her legs swinging up to wrap around his waist and cross at the ankles below his butt. "It feels so, so good for you to be doing that, Negi-sensei! Like, like you're nursing at me! Like a little brother would!"

"Eh?" Negi asked, pausing momentarily.

"I didn't say anything!" Ayaka lied in between gasps of pleasure.

"She has some very strange ideas about what brothers and sisters do for each other, doesn't she?" Natsumi asked Chisame.

"There's all sorts of families, I guess," Chisame agreed.

Chizuru refrained from comment.

Ayaka's cries of obvious enjoyment continued, growing both higher and more frequent. Negi pushed up against her once more, and those cries reached a crescendo as Ayaka achieved her orgasm ... and wetness engulfed Negi's lower body.

"Oh!" Negi said, looking down at where their bodies met.

Ayaka went white. "Oh, no. No, please. Tell me that I didn't urinate on you!"

"Um, w-well," Negi said.

Chizuru came over and took a quick sniff. "No, it's not urine. You made her squirt, sensei."

"Women can do that?" Negi and Ayaka asked in surprised chorus.

"Some of them, sometimes," Chizuru confirmed. She sniffed again. "And some of it is also semen, I believe."

"Oh, sensei, you've given me a precious gift!" Ayaka said, wrapping him up in a tight hug.

"Yes, let's just hope you don't get another precious gift nine months from now," Chizuru added, just a bit dryly.

Ayaka went white again. Actually, so did Chisame and Natsumi.

"What are you talking about?" Negi asked, confused again. He became rather pale and quiet himself once Chizuru explained what she meant by a precious gift. As it happened, the girls recovered before he did.

"We're in big trouble, aren't we?" Natsumi asked in a tone of doom.

"Way to understate things," Chisame groaned. "Even if we're not, well, if anyone finds out about this, we're probably going to go to jail for corrupting a minor. And while I'm sure that some of us have lawyers that will keep them out of jail -"

"My family will probably disown me, actually," Ayaka gloomily predicted.

"Yes, that will probably happen to me too," Chizuru lied. Actually, her father would likely be rather proud of her, though upset that she didn't get it on tape.

"- well, anyways," Chisame sighed.

In order to understand what happened next, it should be understood that Chisame was still a bit exhausted from what she'd been through less than half an hour ago. Between her fatigue and her hormones, her mind wasn't working nearly as well as it usually did. So her next actions become somewhat forgivable.

She continued talking. "And then Negi'll get messed up when they find out that he's been telling people about his magic, and they'll turn him into an ermine."

"We can't let that happen!" Ayaka agreed, nodding vigorously.

"Definitely not!" agreed Natsumi.

Silence fell.

"Wait. Magic?" Natsumi asked into the silence.

Silence fell again.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Negi, Chisame and Ayaka chorused.

"Oh dear," said Chizuru. "Magic is real, and Negi-sensei can use it! What a startling and unexpected discovery!"

Natsumi turned to look at her beloved roommate and "big sister" figure. "Wait, why aren't you -" she started to say, but she was interrupted by Ayaka slamming her hands down on her shoulders.

"Natsumi-chan, you must not tell anyone about this!" the class representative cried, looking panicked. "They really will turn him into an ermine, and while that would be unpleasant but not without certain appealing factors, they will take sensei away from me-I-mean-us as well, which would be a horror beyond horror!"

Natsumi, bewildered, seized on the one part of that statement that she could immediately grasp. "Who's this 'they' that you're talking about?"

"Powerful individuals whose identities, motivations, and intentions I do not know!" Ayaka 'explained' with a shake of Natsumi's shoulders. "This should frighten you as badly as it does me!"

"Ayaka!" Chizuru interjected sharply. "Calm down. Neither of us will tell anyone outside of this room about any of this, especially about this magic business. Will we, Natsumi-chan?" For once, she didn't follow up that sort of question with a pleasantly terrifying smile.

Natsumi was relieved, since Ayaka's obvious panic had frightened her badly enough. "Yes, definitely, not a word to anyone. Um ... does anyone else know?"

"Um, well, Hakase knows, obviously," Chisame muttered, with her gaze hanging low. "She found out at the same time I did."

"Understandable," Chizuru nodded.

"And Tsunetsuki-san, as well," Negi sighed. "She learned around it shortly before the Library Island expedition."

Natsumi and Chizuru both nodded this time. "What with her being Chisame-san's lover and all -" Chizuru mused aloud.

"She's not my lover!" Chisame yelled. "I actually went to a heck of a lot of trouble to make sure she wouldn't be spying on this thing." She paused, half expecting to hear that oh-so-familiar voice behind her saying, 'Futile', so that she'd have to shout, 'You were there' and Matoi would say ...

* * *

"I thought we were friends!" Tsunetsuki Matoi proclaimed, as she broke into Sakurazaki Setsuna's bedroom rather forcefully.

Setsuna coolly looked up from where she was reading Ridolfo Capo Ferro's _Great Representation of the Art and Use of Fencing_. "No, Angel GARd-sama was your friend.  _I_  don't remember ever cultivating your close friendship, Sempai, so I'm afraid you have approached the wrong Setsuna."

The short haired stalker slammed a paper doll with Chisame's handwriting on the table before the swordsgirl. "No, you're the wrong Setsuna! This whole world has the wrong Setsuna! I demand that you tell me where Chisame-sama is to be found! She isn't in her room, and Hakase is in her lab, with no idea where she might be, either! She won't answer our calls, and Negi-sensei is missing, too!"

"What happened to the paper copy?" Setsuna asked flatly. "It was supposed to last a full day. Did you kiss it?"

"Th-That isn't any business of yours!"

Setsuna gave her a cold and even glare. "You forced a kiss on it, didn't you? Disgusting. You're as bad as my half-sister."

Matoi blushed and whipped her head aside. "Chisame-sama wasn't resisting as usual. I should have suspected then..."

Setsuna sighed. "No wonder she asked me for that stencil copy. Your unending stalking must be driving her insane."

"It isn't stalking, it's DEEP LOVE! And you have no room to talk! You're just as bad going after Konoka-san!"

"Th-That's completely different! My motives are pure! I only want to protect her! You know what happened in Kyoto!"

Matoi frowned. "Just tell me where Chisame-sama is and I'll leave."

"I have no idea. I didn't bother to ask. Like you said, it's no business of mine."

Matoi shot her a poisonous evil glare.  _Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii..._

Setsuna replied with a bland, bored glare. "I've been stared at worse."

It went on.  _Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii..._

"I'll have to kick you out, won't I?" Setsuna exhaled.

_Ji-_

Matoi flew out the door, spun in the air twice, and landed on Setsuna's doorstep face-first.

"My apologies. Please feel welcomed to return when you have cleansed your mind of impure thoughts," Setsuna humbly said before closing the door on Matoi's butt.  _That should keep her away for a century or so,_  a rather less humble part of her mind added silently.

"I'll remember this, Sakurazaki!" Matoi shook a fist up ineffectively. "A 3-F student never forgets!"

"Just stalk someone else for a change!" Setsuna said from the inside. "Who knows, maybe you'll make Chisame-san jealous enough for her to notice you."  _Or hopefully, you'll fixate on someone else and leave poor Chisame-san alone,_  the Shinmeiryuu practicioner thought.

Matoi blinked, pulling her face up from the muddy dirt, for it had rained just a couple hours ago, and wiped it off with a hand. False stalk- DEEP LOVING? It felt like a dishonest thing to do, a desperate move. But then, she WAS a desperate woman by her own admission. And wasn't all fair in the war and DEEP LOVE?

Then a dark little light bulb appeared over her head. She knew just the perfect target for FALSE DEEP LOVING to both make Chisame jealous and take revenge on Setsuna by driving her to her own brand of jealousy.

Oh, that would be great.

Giggling rapidly, Tsunetsuki dusted herself off and sprinted mischievously for Konoka and Asuna's dorm rooms.

* * *

"Well, anyway," Chisame said, once she accustomed herself to the fact that she'd succeeded and Matoi wasn't about to sneak up on her, and smothered the strange sense of loneliness that made her feel.

"There's also Asuna-san," Ayaka admitted begrudgingly.

"And Misora-san and Cocone-chan," Negi continued. "To be fair, it always was all right for them to know, since they're part of the local magical community. Same thing for Itoshiki-sensei and Tatsumiya-san."

"Itoshiki-sensei's a mage too?" Natsumi wondered. "How can someone who can use magic be so sad all the time?"

"Get used to the idea, magic tends to bring more trouble than it fixes," Chisame bitterly mused.

"There's also Evangeline-san and Chachamaru-san," Ayaka added, "But again, it isn't that big a deal, since Evangeline-san has always been a supernatural being..."

"Vampire?" Chizuru guessed.

"How did you know?"

"Oh, wild guess, since she tends to remind me so much of Claudia from  _Interview with the Vampire_...!"

"... Yeah, I can see the resemblance," Chisame allowed, "But never tell that to Evangeline. She's the most terrifying person you'll ever meet once you get close enough. Cross her, and she'll mess you badly for life. There's no way I can underline this enough."

Natsumi gulped very loudly. Eva-chan had always creeped her out, to be honest, but receiving confirmation of this kind ...

"Skuld-san also knows ..." Negi retook the main issue's thread.

"Even the new girl?" Natsumi gasped.

"Again, she knew from the start," Ayaka waved a hand around, closing her eyes. "She transferred to our class because she's a goddess."

Natsumi and Chizuru fell into a truly stunned silence. Even Chizuru didn't have to fake it this time.

Too used to strangeness at this point to actually notice that, which would have horrified her if she had been aware of it, Chisame spoke again next. "My sister Sora also knows, and her classmate Keiichi. They learned during the Kyoto trip, when Konoka was kidnapped, along with Konoka herself, Suzushiro-sempai, Makie, Chao and Iinchou here ..."

"And Asakura-san," Negi pointed out.

"Even Asakura!" Natsumi cried. "How come the whole school doesn't know already?

"Asakura-san is well aware how many things I can make disappear," Ayaka said simply. "So does Saotome-san."

"HARUNA, TOO?"

"And Miyazaki-san, yes. Shiina-san knows through association with Hakase-san, and I think that's it from our class. Oh, silly me, I forgot Akashi-san, but that's okay since her father is a mage ..."

"Too much info! Way too much info!" Chisame hissed. "And you're missing Sakurazaki, but she's okay as well since it was the Dean himself who told her even before Sensei arrived."

Natsumi had gone terribly pale. "The Dean knows."

"Well, yes, but he doesn't know most of us know. At least, I think so," Ayaka hummed.

"I'll tell you a list of the staff who knows about magic, just in case you need them for an emergency," Negi said, "But never let them know you're in the secret otherwise, since they ... wouldn't be as willing to understand as Itoshiki-sensei is ..."

Natsumi held up a hand with a moderately depressed look on her face. "Maybe, maybe you could just tell me who  _doesn't_ know. I mean, that might be quicker."

"Out of our class? The twins don't know, and I don't think the cheerleaders have told Madoka either. Same thing with Ayase, but she's sharp, so it wouldn't shock me if she at least suspects. Akira is in the dark, I think, and so is Yotsuba. Ku Fei and Kaede were fighting a bunch of demons with some of us at Kyoto, but they're so dense I doubt they caught on the implications," Chisame reminisced. "Izumi doesn't know, and beyond that... Crap. We suck at keeping secrets."

"You're forgetting Rainyday-san," Ayaka told her. "Actually, she-"

"How am I not an ermine already?" Negi wondered aloud.

"Could it be because all of these people care deeply about you, to the point of being willing to keep such an important secret for your sake, Sensei?" Ayaka asked. "You should count yourself a lucky man, being loved by so many, even if none of them the same way I do..."

"But no one else knows, and we don't want it to spread any further. Okay?" Chisame pressed.

"I won't tell anyone," Chizuru said. And for once, she wasn't lying. Her father probably already knew all of this, and what he didn't know wouldn't be of any interest to him. Or so she told herself.

"Okay, then," Chisame said.

"Um," Negi said, clearly reluctant to bring it up, but compelled by his strange sense of propriety. "Chizuru-san, do you want to -"

"Oh, thank you, Sensei," she said graciously. "But I think you've had more than enough for one night. And anyway, we don't have any onion stalks with us, so I wouldn't be able to really enjoy myself."

"Eh?" Negi asked, as Ayaka and Natsumi both (they thought surreptitiously) rubbed their rears with disturbed expressions on their faces.

"Let's just get cleaned up and get out of here," said Chisame, who had gotten the implications of that remark and didn't want to dwell on them.

* * *

Later that night, it was almost as if everything had returned to normalcy.

Chamo slept soundly in his drawer bed. Hakase also slept like an angel in the bunk below, once again showing no signs of moving up with her roommates. Well. At least someone was becoming more normal instead of the other way around. A real irony that it was Hakase of all people.

And Negi was tucked under the blankets with Chisame, while the rain tapped frantically on the windows. His head was low, resting against her body, and his small hands were balled up in tight fists between their bodies.

It was just like before. But Chisame knew well it all had changed irreparably.

There was no going back, no undoing what had been done after that line was crossed. Not for her, Negi, Natsumi or Ayaka. For all of them, the careless days of innocence had been left behind in the dust.

Even if they weren't pregnant, even if they never did  _that_ again, they'd never be able to forget. Or forgive themselves.

But it had felt so good, it had been like eating poisoned candy ...

Negi opened his mouth in dreams. Chisame knew what he'd say next. Like always, he'd call his cousin's name, his dream mantra to keep the nightmares away. Any moment now, he'd whisper, so sad and sweetly ...

"Chisame-san ..."

Chisame blinked in true astonishment.

"Chisame-san," he repeated while cuddling closer, for once sounding satisfied and happy instead of eager and nervous. And yet, there also was something cracked and shattered in his tone. It was lacking something it had before.

His Partner held him against herself. She guessed what he was lacking now, because she felt it missing from herself, too.

She was scared. Very scared.

But whatever would come next, they'd face it together, she tried to convince herself.

That was what Partners always did.

Right?

"Negi," she whispered, and the word without honorifics felt right then. Or at least, as right as anything could feel at that moment.

Negi placed one of his hands on hers and squeezed it lightly.

She rested her chin on his scalp, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep.

* * *

 

 **Next** : Evangeline.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer:  _Mahou Sensei Negima_  and all related elements and characters are the property and creation of Akamatsu Ken, and the authors of this humble piece have made no material profit from it, and never will do.

This is for adult audiences only! Kids, go read something lighter!

 _Shin Seiki Evangelion_  and all its characters belong to Studio GAINAX, Anno Hideaki and Sadamoto Yoshiyuki.

 _Fate Stay Night_  and all its many characters belong to Type-Moon.

 _Ah my Goddess!_  and all its characters were created by and are the property of Fujishima Kosuke.

 _Mai Hime_  and all its characters belong to Sunrise.

Batman, Superman and all related characters and elements belong to DC Comics.

All other characters mentioned also belong to their respective copyright holders. We make no money out of them, either.

Any resemblance of anything in this story with anything in real life beyond "human beings have eyes, ears and legs" is a simple coincidence.

Thanks a million to Shadow Crystal Mage, Darkenning, and all others who collaborated with Unequally Rational and Emotional, and hopefully will continue doing so.

* * *

**Eva-Nyan Gorashin 1.**

* * *

( **ABSOLUTELY NOT** Eva-Nyan Frank Gorshin, as awesome as that might have been).

* * *

As the opening scene appears onscreen, the whole stage is slowly burning, except for a spotlight area in the middle of it. There, grinning wickedly and wearing a black suit with a red rose on the lapel, the pale boy with the wild hair stands with maniacal confidence.

"You humans," he begins, "are all so weak. Pathetic. Squishy and spineless flesh puppets, driven to live gray and miserable existences. That's why you try to look away from your own uselessness by entertaining yourselves with inanities like television, sports and sex. Hedonist, soft vermin, parasites who only can be happy if you're rubbing yourselves against each other ..."

He sneers, folding his arms like a petulant child. Burnt pieces of curtain flutter down around him.

"I was told to warn you this chapter contains elements your progeny can't and shouldn't watch, because otherwise their puny human minds will crack under the disgusting, harsh reality of your reproductive needs. Hah! That's why we're superior to you! We are immortal, with no need to perpetuate ourselves through others! Why should we, when we already are perfect? And if the needs of the cause demand for more of us, more can be created and be ready to do battle immediately. While you need years and years of being useless children before being able to fight at all. Ha ha!"

He tightens a flaming fist and looks murderously at the cameras. "So run, and preserve your frail minds while you can! Because here, you'll see not even the mighty Queen of the Night is above your base desires! Your ever present sensibilities will be shattered! And of course, you'll see even more of that Springfield simpleton becoming a mindless slave of his desires ..."

With a final loud crack, the final remnants of the stage crumble down around Quartum, while he only grumbles arrogantly. Even Gilgamesh would approve. Probably.

"Well. If you're still here, you were warned. Don't come crying to us later! Because, as your old saying goes ..."

He blows towards the audience, and his breath catches on the flames around him, causing the screen itself to catch on fire as he says,

"If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!"

* * *

**Late Friday Night:**

"There's something I'd like to ask you," Satomi said hesitantly. Awkward beginning to what would likely be a difficult conversation, but it couldn't be helped. She had the nagging sense, though, that it seemed very familiar somehow.

"Then ask," Evangeline replied, lips starting to turn up in smirk as she stood watching some distance away.

"Why am I chained up like this?" she asked, craning her head back to look up at the manacles around her wrists, attached to a thick chain reaching up into the ceiling, which pulled her arms high above her head. Her legs were made to stretch down by a pair of manacles around her ankles that were chained to the floor. Aside from those, she was wearing nothing more than her bra, panties, socks, accessorized by her glasses and hair ties. It was rather cool in the dank dungeon room.

Eva, of course, was wearing her usual lingerie-esque outfit and not even a little bit bothered by the chill or the damp. This could be deduced by the way her smirk had blossomed into a full, teeth-clenched, fang-exposed rictus grin. "Because it is my will that you be so chained, Hakase Satomi," she almost hissed. "And in this place, though all the rest of the world may conspire to thwart my designs, here, my will is supreme!"

"... you realize that you're talking like a supervillain, now?"

"So be it!"

"Oookay, then. Anyway, your answer doesn't really answer my question," Satomi continued. "It's kind of like asking, 'why is the sky blue' and being told 'because God wanted it that way'." She managed to use her fingers to make quotation marks around a certain capitalized word in her sentence. "It just defers the answer, and -"

"It is my will," Evangeline interrupted, guessing where this was going to lead, "because this is the beginning of my long-delayed vengeance upon you!"

"Vengeance?" Satomi repeated, blinking confusedly.

"Yes, vengeance!" Evangeline repeated, clearly savoring the word. "Perhaps you had imagined that I have forgotten that I swore to have my revenge for what you did to me, when you seized control of Chachamaru and twisted her to attack me, her master!"

Satomi blinked some more, and then said, "Oh. Well. I guess you could say that I imagined that you forgot that event. Except that wouldn't really be completely accurate, because I didn't  _imagine_  anything along those lines. I pretty much forgot it myself, but -"

"You. Did. What?" Evangeline bit out.

"- since I didn't remember, it's functionally the same thing, I think. Well, maybe not. Imagining is a deliberate act, after all, where forgetting is more a matter of negligence, and -"

Slowly, under the sound of her words, Evangeline reached up towards her prisoner's neck, fingers trembling with obvious fury. Before they even came close, though, she jerked them back and interrupted. "No," she said. "No, I will deny myself that joy, and gain a greater one by doing so. Only when you beg me will I grant you that release!"

That, at least, got Satomi to shut up. Around then, one of the other robot maids - thankfully, not one of the ones who copied Chachamaru's look - entered the dungeon room through the door behind Evangeline, and not alone. Sakurako was in her pajamas, and still looked a bit sleepy, though her eyes came completely open when she saw what was going on. "Hhh-hhun!" she said. The gag over her mouth kept her from making much sense, though.

"Sakurako!" Satomi gasped, and then went white. "No. You wouldn't!"

"Of course I would!" Evangeline sneered. "You have crossed one who walks the road of a dark mage - did you think that there wouldn't be consequences to such an act?"

"But, but I wasn't even involved with her when all that happened!" she cried. "She doesn't have anything to do with this -"

"And yet she will witness your humiliation nonetheless!" Evangeline crowed, clearly proud of herself.

"Eh?" Satomi said.

"I said, she will witness your humiliation nonetheless!" Evangeline crowed again.

"Oh. Nooooo!" Satomi cried, but she was basically faking it this time. She'd been terrified that Evangeline would take vengeance by hurting Sakurako, but the vampire didn't seem to be thinking in that direction. And she definitely didn't want to give her any ideas ...

"Now, what shall I do first? To what torment shall I subject you?" Evangeline continued, fingers twitching. "Yes, of course! Let us begin with the degradation of your modesty!" With one sharp fingernail, the vampire sliced open the central knot of Satomi's bra, causing it to burst open to reveal the small breasts beneath.

"Oh-ho!" Evangeline cackled. "Someone has been drinking a lot of milk!"

Satomi sighed. "That is a myth," she said, just a bit irritably. "I drink several glasses of milk daily for calcium and vitamins, not because I entertain the ridiculous notion that it will make my breasts grow. My development in this area is entirely typical of persons of my ethnicity and heritage, and I am completely satisfied with it."

"Mmmm!" said the gagged Sakurako, nodding vigorously.

"And so, it seems, are other people who take an interest," Satomi added, with touch of blush in her cheeks.

"Curse your defiance!" Evangeline snarled. She had planned to do a certain amount of pawing and licking and maybe bite the mad scientist a bit - not enough to draw blood, just enough to make her scream and beg for mercy - but now she was angry enough to do even more degrading and humiliating things. Why she would have to ... or she might ... um ...

 _Cripes, why the heck am I having such a hard time thinking of degrading and humiliating things to do?_  she wondered.  _I'm evil, dammit! This should be a cakewalk for me!_  She looked about for some sort of tool, but her 'dungeon' (really just a set of rooms in the resort's foundation that she used for extra storage when necessary) was empty of implements for torture. Wait, what was that in the doorway?

Swift as the thought passed through her mind, her hand was in motion and snatched up the white furry creature that was lurking there. "Well, well, what have we here?" she almost cooed as she wrapped him in one hand and held him up to her face.

"Oh," said Chamo, putting on a genuinely pathetic look of faux bewilderment as he looked about. "I thought this was Chachazero's room, she invited me over to look at her etchings, I'll just be going now, have I ever mentioned that I have a wife and kids who will be destitute if I die?"

"Silence, sub-creature!" Evangeline roared.

"Yes'm," Chamo said, going completely still.

"So you find my vengeance amusing, aye?" she asked, accent starting to come through. When Chamo didn't promptly answer, she shook him a little. "Answer me! Does it amuse you?"

"Could you make up your mind as to whether I'm supposed to be silent or answer questions, first?" the ermine asked, clearly frightened.

"Yes, it clearly amuses you," Evangeline sneered. "Very well, then. You will become a tool of my vengeance!" She whirled to look at Satomi once more, holding up Chamo before her. "Behold your fate, Hakase!"

"You're going to turn me into an ermine?" Satomi asked, genuinely appalled.

"Mmmmm!" Sakurako sounded in protest.

"Y'know, this sort of thing is really murder on my self-esteem," Chamo observed sourly.

"Oh, no," Eva replied, smirking. "This lowest of low creatures -"

"That doesn't help it much either."

"- will be the source of your humiliation. Now, you disgusting filthy animal, lick her!" And she tossed Chamo right at Satomi's exposed breasts. He landed, but immediately jumped off again, and dropped to the floor.

"Are you kidding me?" Chamo cried as he turned back to look at Evangeline. "I'm not gonna do something so disgusting, so repugnant, so base! What sort of a sick pervert do you think I am, anyway?"

"The sort that doesn't want to have his entrails exposed to sunlight," Evangeline answered, looming over him with eyes gone rather scary.

"... okay, that's actually a pretty good description of me," Chamo allowed, and ran up the side of Satomi's body once more.

"I'm sorry, anego, but if I don't do this, I'll die!" he explained to her. "And since I don't want to die, I must do this! It's simple math!"

"No, Chamo-san, reconsider your actions!" Satomi objected. "You could probably escape to warn Negi and the others about this, and they'd come to help us! You'd be a hero!"

Chamo considered this, looked at the door. The robot maid was standing in front of it. "I don't like my chances. I left my ermine flair stuff back in your room, since I didn't think I was going to need it for what I had planned tonight. I think we're stuck!"

"Reconsider!" Satomi repeated. "How will you ever be able to look me in the eye after this?"

"Well, since I've actually peeked on you and Lucky-neechan over there making out a few times, and I can still do it after that, I don't think I'll -"

"Chamo-san!"

"I'm really sorry, but I'm just a weak, helpless creature being threatened into things by a more powerful one," Chamo concluded.

* * *

**Interlude: Negi and Chisame.**

In the meanwhile, elsewhere in the Mahora campus, Negi Springfield woke up with a startled scream. "HAKASE-SAN!"

He breathed deep and loudly, supporting himself up with his hands, as he slowly gained awareness of his current situation. He was in his bedroom, again in Chisame's bunk, with a yawning and mumbling Chisame rubbing her eyes and looking up at him from where she still lied to his side.

"What's wrong now?" she asked.

"I... I had a horrible dream," her teacher and, to some degree now, lover trembled. "Hakase-san was in terrible danger, threatened by some terrifying shadowy figure..." And he peeked down into the bunk below. "GAH! She still isn't here!"

"She said she was going to pull an all nighter at her lab to catch up on that secret project of hers, remember?" a grumbling Chisame pulled him back to herself. "Rest. You've strained yourself to half death with Eva's training lately, and it's making you tense and paranoid."

He pouted. "But it was so real... Maybe we should call her just to be sure...?"

"You know she hates being interrupted at the lab," Chisame played the card of snuggling him against her to get him to shut up already. She didn't do it because she liked how his body felt against hers, no sir. That usually silenced him, but not this time, since he still was muttering about being worried. So she said, "She's pushing herself in her research as much as you are with your training, and would you like being interrupted whenever Evangeline's trying to kill you? Of course you wouldn't, so leave Hakase alone there. She won't listen, being that obsessed with the whole competition with Skuld..."

Not like Chisame cared either if Hakase was so creepily fixed on besting the goddess girl and impressing Chao in the process. No. Let Sakurako worry about all that...

Then something else distracted Chisame's attention. She knew the sensation well by now. It was hard and pressing against her.

Just to be completely sure, she looked down. It was small, but noticeable even in the darkness. Almost pointy, even, tenting up under the fabric of his pajama pants.

"Let me get this straight," she droned. "Having dreams where Hakase's in danger gets it up?"

Face beet red, Negi looked hideously ashamed. "I ... It was a special kind of danger..."

"Damn the day when Haruna showed you that manga," Chisame sighed while she looked around, making sure the ermine hadn't returned from his drinking binge with Chachazero. The underwear drawer was open but he wasn't there. Good. She began pulling Negi's pants down, taking the underwear along with it. "Okay, I guess a quickie won't hurt anyone. We won't be able to get this down at dawn when they're back."

"C-Chisame-san, I don't know if we really should..."

"We won't go all the way," she promised. "Only mouth service."

"O-Okay, then," he agreed - maybe too quickly - bracing himself as her head went lower slowly.

Chisame believed that she'd become quite accomplished with this sort of thing. Well, that was understandable. She'd had a fair amount of practice since that evening. It wasn't as though she enjoyed it, of course. It was degrading and unpleasant. Not that she'd ever tell him that. After all, this was for his benefit, not hers, and if she claimed that she disliked it, he'd be unhappy. Not that she cared, or anything like that, but why make someone unhappy if you didn't -

Wait, what was he doing? Was he - yes, he had his hands on her head as she bobbed up and down. Like he was guiding her efforts, steering them. Either way, he was more of an active participant in this than he had been, usually, and that made her feel strange. The bad kind of strange, like she was doing something wrong.

But also, and it hurt to admit it, the not-as-bad kind of strange. The way that she'd felt when he'd stopped whispering his sister's name and started whispering hers while he slept. The warm way.

Which was bad! What was she, some sort of dog who needed to be patted on the head? She wanted to jerk away from those hands on her hair!

Unfortunately, doing so would probably hurt his feelings, not that she cared, but why make someone unhappy -

Ah. There it was, spewing up into her mouth. In her angrier moments, she sometimes thought about kissing him, on the mouth, right after he came, so he could see what it tasted like. But she'd never do it, of course. So she swallowed instead, then pulled herself up to lie beside him, kissing him on the cheek absentmindedly, and waiting for her breathing to slow back to normal.

"It'll be fine," she said. "And if it's not, we'll make it fine, all right?"

"Okay," Negi said, sounding sleepy again.

_Unappreciative -_

"Thank you, Chisame-san."

 _... well, anyway._  Eventually, they both fell back into their repose.

* * *

 **Kiss of the Ermine**.

Back at the resort, Chamo had begun to suckle firmly at Satomi's right breast, his tongue and even his surprisingly sharp teeth employed to the purpose of teasing at its nipple. Meanwhile, his tail - the dexterity of which Satomi had not heretofore realized - was wrapped around the one on the left side of her chest, squeezing it a bit.

"Bite bite bite!" Chamo chanted.

"Ah! No, that will huuuurrrrr ..." Satomi objected, even though it was pretty clear that whatever sensations he was arousing in her had very little to do with pain.

"Forgive me these trespasses, anego," the ermine said, managing to sound pious. "We are both of us pawns on the chessboard of life." More than a bit of a leer started to creep into his tone. "And forgive me, too, the trespass I am about to commit against your secret garden!"

"Secret - wait, Chamo, where did you get that box cutter?" Satomi demanded as she saw him holding the cutting implement between his two paws.

"Geez, anego, I said I left my ermine flair stuff behind, not all my tools. D'ya think I'm crazy? And now this device will be put to woeful use! Ah, well, it simply cannot be helped."

"You're enjoying this far too much to be saying things like that!" she objected as he climbed down to perch on her hip and began cutting away at her panties, somehow avoiding even the slightest contact between her flesh and the point of his blade.

"Not so! It simply seems that way! I am attempting to appear as a lecherous cur, the better to lull our mutual captor into a sense of security! It's a clever plan, wouldn't you say?"

"No, not after you go and announce it to her like that!"

"Ah, well, it cannot be helped."

"And you're using that expression in inappropriate ways!" she added as he cut the other side of the panties loose, making the front start to roll back in the direction of her crotch.

"Be that as it may, the time has come for me to go where no ermine has gone before! Nor man, nor woman - lucky-neechan not quite counting yet." And with that, he swooped down to begin applying the same techniques to another hardened aroused nub of flesh that he'd used on the nipples.

But before he reached it, a hand plucked him up. "Oookay, that's enough of that."

"Nooo!" Chamo protested. "Don't stop me! If I don't do what Evangeline says, she'll punish me terribly!"

"Think about what you just said!" Evangeline snarled as she lifted the ermine up to her face. There were limits beyond which she was unwilling to take this torment. Still, a look at Satomi's trembling and denuded form suggested that she'd accomplished her goal for the moment. And so she permitted herself to cackle madly. "At lasssst! Vengeance is mine! Lower the wench!"

Once the maid stopped holding her hands behind her back, and went over to release the chain holding Satomi up, Sakurako was able to get the gag over her mouth off pretty easily. This accomplished, she quickly headed over to the quivering Satomi. "Are you okay, Satchan?" she asked, somewhat anxiously.

"That was very embarrassing," the scientist murmured.

"But you're not hurt or anything?"

"Well, no ..."

Sakurako sighed. "Oh, thank goodness."

Evangeline stopped in mid-cackle. "Thank goodness?-! I just tortured your girlfriend! What's wrong with you?"

"Umm, well, I mean, it could have been worse," Sakurako noted, she thought quite reasonably.

"But ... the ... and ..." Evangeline sputtered, gesturing at Chamo.

"Well, I mean, if you really wanted to torture her, you might have handcuffed her and told her that the only way she could get loose was to saw off her own foot," Sakurako offered up helpfully. "Or you could put a mask on her, with a lock on it, and the only key in someone's stomach, and set it up so that if she doesn't unlock it by a time it'll tear her jaw off. Ooh! Or you could put her in an iron lung type thing, and feed her through a tube to a funnel, and get her to trust you, and when she does, you pour molten metal down the tube and into her -"

"Um, Sa-saku, I don't want to second guess you, but is it really a good idea to give her ideas like this?" Satomi asked, far more hesitantly than was her wont.

Sakurako paused, took a good long look at Eva's frozen horrified expression, and looked back at Satomi. "Yeah, I think we're good." And paused, then continued, just as hesitantly. "And, you know, you did, well, sort of look cute all naked and helpless like that, you know. I'm really kinda turned on right now."

"You're what?" Eva snapped.

"You're what?" Satomi echoed, a little more quietly.

To Evangeline's annoyance, it was pretty clear that Sakurako was answering Hakase when she answered. "I'm turned on. Actually a lot turned on. You know, this last little while has been a little frustrating, what with you trying so hard to impress Chao in that thing with Skuld-chan, and I've been feeling sort of neglected with you doing that, with no breaks for smoochy face time. But here you are, all naked and embarrassed already, and you're turned on, too, see, with these nippples still so hard -" Sakurako paused to flick them gently, making them harden even further. "- so really, why don't we just do it?"

It has been said, and said often, that people are liked for their qualities, and loved for their flaws. To someone who prized logic and rationality, someone who almost embodied illogic and irrationality could really only be said to be flawed. Perhaps it was that, in combination with the rush of hormones through her mind, which made Satomi croak out, "Okay."

"Yaay!" Sakurako shouted, and started to pull down her pajama bottoms.

"Woohoo!" Chamo shouted as the panties she was wearing underneath were exposed. This proved to be a mistake, as it reminded Evangeline of his presence. With a glare, she turned and threw him out the door of the room with great force. Ignoring the rather wet smacking sound (and faint cry of "Animal abuse!") that he made on impact, she turned back to look at the two girls. To her stunned horror, Sakurako was mounted on Satomi's body, with the scientist's face pressed into her crotch as she finished the job of stripping Satomi of her panties.

"Are you seriously just going to do this in front of me?" Evangeline yelled at them.

"Well, you don't have to watch," Sakurako pointed out. "Ah, see, you're very turned on right now, Satchan! All wet and gooey here! Let me clean you up!" And with that, she promptly began licking at the flower of Satomi's joy, her tongue giving freqent and delicate attention to the clitoris.

Satomi's head fell back from its position between Sakurako's thighs and let out a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a scream, her eyes gone almost blank.

"Ah, even as I clean up, it gets messier and messier!" Sakurako claimed, her tone clearly not as dismayed by the circumstance as her words would have indicated. "I think we're gonna have to use some other methods, here. Fortunately, I've got this."

Eva blinked as Sakurako pulled a double-ended dildo out of her pajama top. "What? Where in the world did you get that?"

"I picked it up while your maid was kidnapping me," she explained. "Isn't that lucky?"

* * *

**Interlude: Misa and Madoka**

"Yes, Negi! And Other-Negi! And Yet-A-Third-Negi! Take me, take me now!" Misa cried out as the three thoroughly Reverse-Hikaru-Genji'd Negis, their members swollen with desire for her and her alone, bore her to the ground of the flower-filled field and began to make sweet passionate love to her. And then Madoka was bending over her saying, "Misa, wake up, something's happened."

After a brief moment where she considered murdering her room-mate, since no jury would ever convict her under these circumstances, Misa sleepily asked, "Wha?"

"Sakurako! She's missing! She's not in her bed!" Madoka told her, glancing in the direction of Sakurako's bed.

Misa lifted her head and looked over at Sakurako's bed, confirming that, yes, Sakurako was not to be found there. "Bafroom," she said, closing her eyes. "Go 'way."

"She's not in the bathroom. I already looked there. And I think there was some sort of a struggle! The window's opena, and so are some of our drawers!"

Misa opened her eyes again, and looked about. Sure enough, the drawer where she kept her premarital marital aids was open. It might be worth it to check to see whether anything was missing. "We'da hurd sompin," Misa opined. "'S no big deal. Go 'way."

"Dammit, Misa, this is our friend we're talking about here!" Madoka said, dropping the whisper she'd been using up until this point. "We've got to do something!"

Misa drew in a deep breath. "Okay," she said, speaking much more intelligibly. "Let's say that she was kidnapped. Will she be more kidnapped in a few hours, after I finish my beauty sleep?"

"The trail will be colder by then!" Madoka insisted.

"I'm not a detective. Neither are you. We'll get help when people are less likely to wish death upon us for waking them up!" To her credit, she was thinking of Negi and the pactio cards when she said it, rather than just wanting to get back to her wonderful, wonderful dream.

Madoka made a few more arguments, but Misa proved impervious to them as she slowly slipped back into her sleep. She was a bit annoyed that she didn't get back to the dream of the Negis, but the one where she was living in a house with that cute butler from the Konoe mansion was kind of cool, too ...

* * *

Evangeline decided not to think about the implications of Sakurako's remark, because she suspected that they were going to give her a serious headache, later. "And how can you be planning to use that thing? Aren't you a -"

"Virgin?" Sakurako asked, then laughed merrily. "Don't be silly, Eva-chan, I'm a cheerleader and in my third year of junior high school! Of course not!"

Evangeline was too appalled at being called 'Eva-chan' to say anything as Sakurako slid one end of the dildo up into her with a little gasp, and then startled to scissor her hips together with those of Satomi. "Are you ready to feel really good, Sat-chan?"

"I-I-I, aiyaiyai ... yes," Satomi eventually said.

"Well, then, here we go!"

This was not how Satomi had ever imagined that she'd lose her virginity. Admittedly, she'd gotten used to the idea that she'd be losing it to a girl, particularly after last Christmas. (And actually, looking back at it, she'd realized that Chao might have been flirting with her a couple of times when they were working together. It was hard to be sure with her, though.) But she`d always expected that she'd be in bed when it happened. Or possibly a shower, or a bath, or ... well, lying back on a stone floor while Evangeline stared at her hadn't been any part of her visualization of this event.

(Sometimes there had been other people staring at her, and/or joining in, but that was a different set of issues.)

Yet here she was, watching Sakurako lubricate the top of the other side of the dildo, rubbing it up against her vulva and clitoris in ways that caused rather exciting sensations. And then its head was sliding up into her, spreading the walls of the passage further than her rudimentary explorations with her fingers had ever done. There was an instant of shocking pain, and then she could feel it moving even more deeply yet.

She wanted to say something silly and sweet, like, "We're one." But it was strange. It didn't feel like they were one, not really. Sakurako was over there, hunching her hips to make the dildo move back and forth inside of her, not in her arms, or pressed up against her. They weren't really touching; it was more like they were using the same object as an object of onanism. It felt ... good, but there was an emptiness, too.

And then her hand, shaking a bit with the sensations she was feeling, found Sakurako's hand, and the two hands clasped together. She looked at it, looked up the arm attached to it, and found Sakurako's sweetly smiling face, just as the other girl chose that moment to say, "We're one."

The emptiness was gone. "Yes," she said back. It was all right now. She would never be able to say things like that with a straight face. But the silly person could, and that would make it all all right ...

The final rush came. (Oh, she thought vaguely, that must be why they call it that.) Its kind was familiar to her from the nights spent alone and masturbating to fantasies of Kazuya-sempai, even if its degree was unlike anything she'd ever known before. It made her fall back, losing the sight of Sakurako's face for the dimly lit recesses of the room's ceiling. But she never let go of her hand.

And apparently that helped to pull Sakurako up, so that a few moments later, she was bending over Satomi's supine form, leaning down to kiss her, once more, and say, "My turn next, right?"

"No!" shouted Evangeline's voice. "Not your turn next! Get out of here next! Both of you, out, out!"

"But we can't leave for a day after we came in, so -" Sakurako pointed out.

"OUUUUUUT! Go down to the beach, go fly a kite, do whatever you want but get out of my house!"

* * *

**Welcome Back, Hakase Satomi (You Vixen!)**

Sometime later, Satomi opened the door of her dormitory room and crept in, trying to be as quiet as possible to avoid waking her roommates. Alas, stealth was not one of the areas in which she was gifted. ( _Memo to self: develop skills in this area_ , she thought with a wince as everything she did made noise. Admittedly, there were a lot of self-memos in the queue ahead of it.)

"Hakase-san!" Negi yelped as he sat up in bed beside Chisame, who likewise winced at the sound but didn't open her eyes just yet. "Thank goodness that you're all right!"

She was surprised enough by that remark to forebear from chastising Negi for imputing her safe return to non-existent personifications of moral value. "Did you have some idea that I was in danger, sensei?"

Chisame did open her eyes now and sat up as well. "He had a dream about you in some kind of danger. Got him really exc- upset," she said, changing words in mid-sentence. "Everything was actually all right, right?"

"Well, I suppose that you could say that nothing too bad happened, but I was kidnapped by Evangeline's maids and dragged to her resort as part of an attempt at revenge," Satomi mused aloud. "As I said, nothing too bad happened. I do think I need to have a little talk with Chamo-san about his priorities, though. But it's not too pressing."

Negi's eyes had gotten incredibly wide, but all that emerged from his mouth was the word, "Eh?"

"Oookay," Chisame said at length, after processing all that had just been said. "What did happen, if it wasn't too bad?"

"Oh, it's not so important," Hakase assured her. Inside, her inner mad scientist was laughing maniacally and chanting 'I've got a secret', accompanied by childish taunts. She wondered whether this was what Chao felt like all the time. No wonder she smiled so much, if this was the case. "In any event, I just came by to get a change of clothes before I head back to the lab."

"Ah," Chisame said, nodding in weary understanding as Satomi headed over to the closet and began drawing out a fresh lab coat to replace the slightly ragged one she was wearing. "Because they interrupted your work on the competition. Right."

"Actually, I'm going to be doing some other things for a while," Satomi said as she stepped behind a curtain to get dressed out of Negi's sight. She didn't want to confuse the poor boy by showing him what she was almost wearing under the coat she'd salvaged from the wreckage of her clothes before leaving the resort. Well, the notion was actually a bit more appealing now, but it was probably unkind. "I've got to make some modifications to Chachamaru's chassis, and also I'm going to be spending a lot more time with Sakurako-chan, too."

"Sakurako-chan," Chisame repeated. "Right. So what did she have for dinner, anyway?"

"Something with mangos, I think," Satomi answered promptly. Then she realized what was implied by the fact that she knew that, and flushed. "Or possibly not," she added lamely.

"This is another one of those conversations that's going to be explained to me when I'm older, isn't it?" Negi asked.

"You're getting good at recognizing them."

* * *

With the exceptional agility one would expect of a cheerleader possessed of supernatural powers, Sakurako snuck back into her room through the still-open window she'd been dragged out of earlier that night. She guessed that her roommates must still be asleep. Well, that was understandable, since the sun was just now starting to rise.

As it happened, her guess was only half-right. Madoka was slumbering in a chair facing the window, baseball bat close at hand, and she jerked awake as soon as Sakurako set foot to floor. "Saku!" she hissed. "Where the heck have you been?"

Misa's eyes slid half-way open at the sound of Madoka's voice. She noted Sakurako's presence, grunted acknowledgement, and closed her eyes again to try and get more sleep.

Sakurako opened her mouth to tell Madoka where she'd been. "E-" At the last second she remembered that Madoka still had no notion of all the strangeness that was going on. Telling her about Eva's resort would not be a good idea. "E- Ipanema!" she said instead.

Madoka boggled. "Ipanema? You went to freaking Brazil?!"

"Best beach in the world," Sakurako said, nodding vigorously as she envisioned herself digging a hole while she was inside it.

"What were you doing there?" Madoka demanded.

Total blankness filled Sakurako's mind. There was nothing to do but try honesty. "I was having sex!" she said happily. Oh, honesty felt goooooood. Almost as good as the sex had!

As Madoka face-faulted, Misa's eyes snapped open and she reared up from her supine position. "Hakase, right?" she asked, grim-faced.  _Please don't let it have been Negi, please don't let it have been Negi._

Sakurako nodded even more vigorously. "Satomi-chan!" she confirmed, happy to be spreading the joyous news.

Misa smiled then. "That's my girl," she said, and held up a fist. "Sis Fist!" As Sakurako bumped fists with her, Misa's mind was filled with the certainty that she was not about to lose to Sakurako.  _Negi, you will be mine_.

Madoka sighed as she got up from the floor where she'd landed. "Well, at least you two are the same age," she muttered.

"What was that?" Misa asked sharply.

"Nothing," Madoka said virtuously as she headed over to her bed. "Now, I'm going to try and get some sleep, since someone has kept me up worrying."

"Awww, that's sweet!" Sakurako cooed. "Don't worry, though, Madoka-chan, someday Kyon-sempai will notice you!"

"Thank you," Madoka said, blushing a bit.

"And if not, then surely Suzumiya will give her a tumble," Misa said as she settled back down again.

The thrown pillow slammed into Misa's head with great force.

* * *

**Interlude: Satomi and Chachamaru.**

Deep within the laboratory, a low, throaty chuckle escaped Satomi's throat as she cut Chachamaru's featureless chest open with a precision scalpel, opening the layers of artificial skin to reveal the circuitry beneath.

"Heh, heh heh heh ..." she laughed, in the creepiest Mad Scientist tone a fourteen year old can achieve. "And so, it begins. Tonight, we take a fateful first step towards a next evolutionary stage! The machine will become fully human, to the point no one will be able to tell either type of lifeform apart at first glance!"

"Actually, no one takes me for a robot even now. .." Chachamaru said, with a expresionless face that reminded Hakase of her mission to place as many sensitive points on and around her breasts as possible.

"I mean it on a more personal level, Chachamaru," replied her creator. "Think about it. You can't even bathe in public, because then everyone around you would notice your true nature."

"But you and Chao have both told me my nature is not something to be ashamed of. That I am a wonder of this age, an unique and wonderful being surpassing the boundaries of mere flesh."

"And it's all true!" Satomi exclaimed proudly, beginning to tinker with the contents of the right breast. She'd start by making them bigger and softer for added appeal. Not as big as Chizuru's or Mana's, but ... well, Chachamaru was taller than Sakurako, so bigger breasts would be required to achieve a better esthetics balance. Maybe slightly bigger than Chisame's. Yes, yes, Chisame had perfectly shaped breasts. "B-But that's a result of your personality, not your looks! It doesn't matter if you lose your mechanical appearance for a more human one! It only means your outside will now match your inside!"

"I see. I suppose that does make sense. Are you agitated? I note that your heart rate has risen."

"I feel fine. And soon, so will you."

"What are you doing there?" a voice asked from the door, and then Hakase didn't feel that well.

Sure enough, it had been Skuld talking, walking into the chamber followed by Chao, a bored looking Asuka, and the other two new members of the think tank, the prodigy child named Bulma and the girl who reminded everyone of a cross between Satomi herself and Haruna, Shiguma Rika, lab coats fluttering in synchrony behind them with their steps.

Hakase looked over her shoulder, concentrating her glowering glare on Skuld. "I believe that's a self answering question: I am working. The real question would be, what are _you_ doing here?"

"Whaddya mean by that?" Asuka grunted, as Rika-san cooed and rushed to Chachamaru's side to look up and down at her naked frame on the operating table. It was the first time she ever saw the gynoid unclothed, and her fascination was a 50/50 mix of scientific curiosity and ... something else.

Cringing, Asuka continued, "We were looking for you! We're supposed to be working on Project X! Work on your doll after hours!"

Satomi looked back at her prize creation. "I must concentrate my attentions wherever my current inspiration strikes. I'm in no mood to work on Project X for the time being, since I'm at the edge of a much bigger breakthrough here."

"And what would that be?" Chao, the one of them actually used to Satomi's behavior, asked patiently.

"You're trying to make her anatomically correct?" Skuld guessed with an amused smug smirk.

Hakase stared back at her again. "What if I was? Is there something wrong with that?"

"You asked the same thing about the Gamma Generator, and remember how that ended up," Asuka grumbled.

"Bad? Rika thinks it's wonderful!" Rika clasped her hands together, her glasses gaining a worrying full sparkle. "Rika is willing to help in this noble project to perfect such a ... beautiful piece of machinery!"

"Thank you for your enthusiast praise," Chachamaru said humbly. "But your heart rate has quickened very abruptly, the same as Hakase. Are you all feeling okay?"

Asuka facepalmed. "Shiguma-sempai, we aren't even familiar with this area of research."

Skuld chuckled, much to what barely showed as worry in Chao's always sunny expression. "Oh, if it's for a purpose like this, then I suppose we can take two days off our previous schedule to tackle this unexpected side assignment. We could even apply what we develop here for Project X itself!"

"Seriously?" Satomi huffed. "Your mechanical designs all lack the sense of humanity I'm attempting to achieve here. Besides, it's something I'd prefer to work on alone."

"What? No!" Rika all but whined. "Don't hog this wonderful experiment all to yourself! Rika will do anything, anything you want Rika to do if you let Rika help!" She put her fists under her own chin and wagged her hips rather childishly. Even Bulma-chan shook her head. Asuka looked like she wanted to vomit.

"I'll have you know that, while I tend to favor the Banpei models for their maximum efficiency and economy, I'm also perfectly able to create lifelike machinery!" Skuld boasted, folding her arms. "Left to your own devices, you'd take too long and drag even further in your intended research, but with me helping you, you'll get it done in no time!"

Satomi frowned, but then looked at Chao's smiling and nodding face and relented reluctantly. "Very well. I suppose it's for the common interest of everyone's learning, as well ..." Then a tiny Negi inside of her reminded her she was supposed to be saying something else. "Thank you ..."

Rika jumped up. "Yayyy! Can Rika give her the first test drive after we're done?"

Hakase paled. "Test drive?"

"Well," Rika reasoned, "Absolutely every experiment must be throughly tested after completion, that's the fifth commandment of Science! And if you're going to install all biological functions into her, then ..."

A blunt silence fell on the lab.

"Or is any one other of you willing to offer yourselves for it?" Rika asked then.

"The job's all yours," Asuka waved a hand indolently.

"Is there something you consider I should know about this?" Chachamaru tentatively asked. "Because I am afraid I am not understanding it all..."

Chao patted Bulma's head. "Bulma-chan, darling, you're working with Dr. Akagi until we finish with this side project."

Bulma blinked. "Why?"

"Don't ask, we'll tell you at the proper time, okay?"

"While I have nothing against Shiguma-san," Chachamaru said quietly then, "I would prefer my first experience in that field, assuming it is the field I have started suspecting about, NOT to be shared with her..."

"Awww! Meanie!" Rika pouted.

* * *

**Saturday Afternoon:**

A little while later, relatively speaking, Evangeline found herself seated outside of Starbooks, punishing herself by drinking their swill. And, of course, pouting. She'd had such a brilliant plan to humiliate and degrade Hakase and Shiina, and not only had it not worked, but they'd actually ended up even more nauseatingly happy than they'd been before. So infuriating.

Even worse than all that, she was hearing the whispering again. She might go for weeks without hearing it, but inevitably, something would happen, and the quiet voices would assail her.

"Hey, isn't that her? The so-called Undying Mage? Ah, isn't she cute? She can't be so bad, being so cute, surely!"

"I heard that she's actually a total soft touch."

"I heard that she abandons sworn oaths of vengeance at the drop of a hat."

"I heard that she's a giant chicken."

Her head snapped up at that one. What?

"Buck-aw?" said Boo-sensei, passing through on some errand. "Buck-buck-bruck-buck-bock-brrraaah?"

"No, sensei," she answered, tensely. "Nothing is the matter."

She knew that they weren't real, these voices. She was just twisting half-heard words into sentences that suited her mood. And since her mood was extraordinarily bad, so was what she was 'hearing'. Of course, there was a way to drown the voices out, but thinking about the Thousand Master and how badly he'd screwed her over would only put her in an even worse mood.

"Good morning, master," Chachamaru said as she walked up to the table and sat down.

Well, this was a distraction, at least. "Where were you this morning?" she demanded. "You left the house before dawn."

"Hakase summoned me to her laboratory," Chachamaru explained. "Apparently, she wishes to make certain modifications to my epidermis, and install certain newly developed peripherals, as well. I am somewhat confused by her explanation, but apparently, she wishes me to know the same joys she has recently discovered."

Eva's face collapsed to the tabletop. "She's making you anatomically correct," she muttered. "I've created a monster."

"Master?" Chachamaru asked, not sure what was meant by that.

"Never mind," Eva said, getting up again. "You'll find out soon enough."

"Very well," Chachamaru said complacently.

For a moment, Evangeline stared at her partner. "Why do you just accept that?" she asked suddenly. "Aren't you curious?"

"Yes, but I accept that you would tell me if it was of critical importance," the gynoid explained.

"Why do you believe that?" Eva pressed. "Why do you trust me so much?"

"... because you are my master," Chachamaru answered after some hesitation.

Evangeline grunted. "Ah. So it's just your programming, then. Figures."

"No," Chachamaru said, after some more hesitation. "I do not think that it is. My programming requires me to obey your orders as absolutes, except where contraindicated. But you have never ordered me to trust you. I think, then, that I trust you ... because you have never ordered me to do so, even though it would be a trivial act."

The tiny vampire looked away. "That's Stockholm Syndrome, not trust. Small favors being magnified into incredible kindnesses, out of desperation and fear." Her lips curled in a snarl of disgust.

"I do not fear you, Master."

"You should," Evangeline growled. "All of you should."

Chachamaru was silent for several moments, before she finally spoke again, in a somewhat cooler tone. "In addition to never ordering me to trust you, you have never ordered me not to criticise you. And it occurs to me that if permitting small favors to be magnified into incredible kindnesses out of fear is a contempible weakness, then so is insisting on magnifying one's own petty cruelties into -"

"Shut up," Evangeline snapped.

And of course, Chachamaru obeyed the order.

"The fact that I don't do half or more of the things that I could do is not virtue," the vampire continued. "It's laziness and sloth, more than anything else. Those are sins, last time I checked."

Chachamaru looked dubious.

"What?" Eva growled.

The gynoid held up a sign. 'Someone told me to shut up,' it read.

Another growl, and her hands clenched the edges of the table. "Speak if you've a mind to speak."

She promptly did so. "I question whether or not the wisdom to recognize that certain acts are pointless, or will simply serve as a momentary entertainment, and the mercy to not undertake them, can really be considered laziness."

"I don't know how you do it, making good of nothing at all," Evangeline groaned, lying her head flat on the table once more. "How someone who knows me as well as you do can insist on believing the best about me ... it's just unfathomable."

"Yes, Master," Chachamaru said.

"I'm tired," Evangeline said, without looking up. "I'm going home to bed."

"Hm," said a certain person who has heretofore made only brief cameos. "Methinks something needs doing, here."

* * *

 

What with one thing and another, Evangeline didn't get back to her cabin until much later, late enough that she was physically weary in addition to the emotional fatigue that had afflicted her earlier in the day. She was tired enough that when she got dressed for bed, and her head hit the pillow, she was out like a light, instead of spending time going over her grudges, old and new, as she generally did every day.

So in a way it wasn't all that surprising that she 'awakened' into a very vivid dream. It was a fairly familiar one, too. One of the wonderful perks of living forever was a tendency towards flashbacks to dramatic events of one's past, and she'd reflected on this day quite a few times over these past fifteen years. She knew that she was dreaming, but moved in accordance with her memories nonetheless, both observer and participant.

As always, in this particular dream. Chachazero awakened her with the cheerful news that the village which had driven them out the other day - after they'd obligingly rescued it from a few demons who'd shown up for no good reason - was presently being attacked by an even larger army of the dark folk. She tromped out to watch, and could smell the scent of ash in the wind.

She laughed exultantly as the borrowed coat she was wearing fluttered behind her in the wind. "Serves 'em right!" she cried. "Shun me, will they? Well, now it's time to pay the piper! Isn't it hilarious?" she said, turning to her traveling companion.

Nagi was staring down at the burning village, his face unreadable.

_And now he'll grab his tattered old jacket off of my shoulders, and race down to help those idiots. He'll get hurt, and hurt badly, fighting for people who turned their backs on him. Oh, they'll thank him this time, but it's hardly worth it. But he'll do it anyway, and -_

"Yeah," Nagi said heavily. "Serves 'em right."

_Huh?_

"Let's get out of here, before the demons get the idea that we're up here, rather than down there," he said, turning to start ambling down the trail that led away from the town. "You still cold? You can keep the coat if you want it."

Eva found herself blinking. This ... wasn't what had happened. Not at all. The dream was taking a strange shape.

Of course, her self in the past didn't realize that. "Hey!" she shouted. "Don't you just walk away from me, I'm not done with you yet! You can't pay me off with a coat!"

"Wow, there's a shocker," she heard him mutter as he kept walking. Naturally, she followed him.

"And it's a crappy coat, too!"

* * *

 

They didn't encounter any demons that day; whatever army had marched into the town had apparently satisfied themselves with what they found there, without sending out search parties for those who'd beaten their scouts so badly the other day. No obstacle of demon kind stood athwart their path, nor any of the human kind either. They didn't see anyone.

Nor did they talk all that much. Usually, Evangeline would pepper Nagi with demands that he start taking her and her challenges seriously, with Chachazero throwing in her descriptions of the sorts of things she looked forward to seeing from their battle. When Nagi spoke in response, it was usually to mock them or none-too-subtly suggest that they go elsewhere.

Today, though, he kept silent, and the Evangeline of the past eventually stopped trying to provoke him, clearly frustrated by his silent reserve. Chachazero managed to find a different distraction by chasing butterflies, catching them, and slowly vivisecting them.

Eventually, they made camp in a clearing in the woods. Nagi built a campfire from fallen branches, and then, to Eva's disgust, started the fire with flint and steel, rather than a spell. "Have we reverted to our inner boy scout, now?" she sneered.

That got a reaction out of him, at least. "Hey, hey, don't go mocking the Scouts," he answered. "Learned a lot of cool stuff from their field books."

Of course, she snorted. And after another interval of silence, she found herself asking, "So why didn't you go help those stupid villagers?"

"Do I need a reason?" he asked, not meeting her gaze.

"No, but you've got one."

"Eh," he said, shrugging. "I'd just cause even more havoc, right? They showed up because we were there, yesterday. If we drove 'em off again today, they'll show up tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. This way, they'll get bored." He shrugged again. "Probably shitty for the villagers, but hey, life's a bitch, right?"

She swallowed. "Yeah. Yeah, it is. You're starting to think my way." Her wicked little smile came back.

"Guess so," Nagi allowed. And now he turned to look at her. "So, about that offer last night. Still on the table?"

 _Won't you be mine?_  She'd asked him that. He'd said nothing.

This called for her to say something clever.

"Uh," she said.

"Woohoo! We're finally getting some action again, master!" Chachazero enthused beside her. "Are you gonna do that thing with the knife and the feathers? The way that guy managed to scream himself hoarse was really cool!"

Once again, her doll had done her a favor without realizing or intending it. Evangeline finally found her voice. "Chachazero, shut down."

"What?" the doll said, spinning to look up at her. "But - but, mistress, I wanna watch!"

"What part of shut down are you having problems understanding?"

"Aw, mann-" Chachazero whined, but the whine and any motion that the doll might have made ceased abruptly. Nagi gently picked her up and moved her back from the fire.

"Nice of you," Eva growled. "So. About that accepting my offer just now. What are you trying to do?"

Nagi sighed. "For Pete's sake. I'm bored, and there's a girl nearby who's really cute and has expressed an interest. So naturally I must have some sort of sinister plan in mind! If you were kidding around, last night, just say so and I'll go back to trying to get you off my case."

"I wasn't kidding!" she objected. The problem was, she wasn't sure what, if not kidding, she'd actually been trying to do. The words had come out of nowhere, surprising her as much as they probably had surprised him. No one could make her so uncertain and confused as this idiot.

"Well, then," he said, leaning in over her head. "Maybe we should see where this goes. And the only way to see that is to actually go there."

Eva throttled the impulse to gulp as he looked down at her from a distance of a few inches. Without a word, she sembled into her more grownup form.

Nagi blinked, lifted up a hand to run a finger down her jawline from her ear. "It's a remarkable illusion," he said. "Up until you lost it, back then, I really didn't have a clue that's what it was. Can you really keep it up, even when -"

"I only lose it when I panic," she said, voice turned low and sultry. "I don't see any reason for me to be panicking right now. Do you?" Her hand reached out to press against his abdomen - not to push him away, merely to experience the somewhat unfamiliar sensation of resting a hand on someone for a purpose other than punching that person.

"No," he said, drawing even closer. "Unless you're afraid of this sort of thing, too."

And their lips touched. The kiss was surprisingly gentle at first, but their mutual hunger made it deepen quickly, tongues reaching out to rub against each other even as their hands were rubbing against each other's faces and bodies. One of her hands, the one pressed against his abdomen, slid down until its fingers were rubbing against a hardness.

"Oh, my," she said, pulling back from the kiss. "Someone's excited, aren't they?"

"I told you that I was," he said, reaching down towards the hand.

"Ah, no," she said, and he stopped in mid-reach. "I can handle this." It was a simple matter of getting the zipper undone, and then the boxers out of the way. "Well," she said, swallowing. "Someone is very excited." And with that, she started to bend down towards the evidence of his excitement.

"Uh, moving pretty fast, there," Nagi said.

She paused, looked up at him with a grin that displayed her fangs to full effect. "What's the matter, boy, scared?" Before he could answer that, she took him into her mouth. Well, most of him. It was a rather large unit, after all. He leaned back as she began to bob up and down on it, licking each sensitive portion of the engorged organ.

Owing to the strange nature of what was happening, the odd way that the dream was going further and further away from what happened, Eva's self-awareness was not as well-focused as it might have been. And so the first warning that she had of something being wrong was when she heard the footfall on the ground behind her.

"Oh, boy," she heard Nagi say in a rather frightened tone. "Uh ... this isn't what it looks like."

"Indeed," said a cool, formal and very female voice. "And would you be so kind as to explain, then, what it in fact is, if it is not what it looks like?"

Evangeline pulled back quickly and whirled around to glare at the intruder on this private moment. And the version of her mind that was well-aware that this was all just a dream wondered what in the world possessed her subconscious, to bring that one into it?

The spoiler, as both sides of her bifurcated mind thought of her, looked down at her with a cold expression from those mismatched eyes that glowed with anger, beneath a haircut that resembled her own far too closely for Evangeline's comfort. That hair was darker, almost golden, in contrast to the pale straw color of the vampire's locks, and she was staring down at Eva with a disdainful expression.

There was no mistaking her appearance. She had, of course, heard rumors that this one had escaped her fate, and was seen at times in the company of the Thousand Master. But when she actually met him, he was alone, and she'd taken it for granted that the rumors were just that. Evidently, she'd been wrong. (And from the existence of a son born five years later, the Eva of the present knew that she'd been more than wrong.)

"Arika Anarchia Entheofushia," Eva sneered, looking up at her.

"Indeed so," the Queen of Calamity agreed, and then promptly shifted her gaze off of Evangeline as though dismissing her utterly from her thoughts. "I am waiting for that explanation, Nagi. With bated breath."

Nagi took in a deep breath. "Okay, the truth is that I was lying, that was what it looked like."

"Imagine my stunned surprise."

"But there's still more to the situation than meets the eyes!"

"Do tell."

"You see, I actually had a hunch that you'd be showing up around now."

Now Arika's classically elegant eyebrow quirked up. "Indeed."

Nagi nodded forcefully. "And I was trying to get her ready ... for both of us!"

"You were trying what now?" Eva said, breaking off her fierce glower in Arika's direction to snap her head around to Nagi's direction.

The eyebrow stayed high on Arika's forehead. "Indeed?" Only the slightest of intonations distinguished this comment from the earlier one.

"Yeah! Doesn't she kinda remind you of Iri?" Nagi asked, resting his hands on Evangeline's cheeks and turning her face so that she was looking at Arika again.

"Who the flaming fishsticks is Iri?" Eva demanded.

"As I recall, Iri was sweet-tempered and well-behaved," Arika responded. "And while I enjoyed her company, I believe you enjoyed our time together with her and Kiritsugu much more than I did."

"Kiritsugu? Magus killer Kiritsugu? What the -"

Arika continued to ignore her. "Be that as it may, I an willing to endure a great deal as a result of our relationship, but to see you intimately entangled with a prepubescent vampire is a bit much to take."

"Prepubescent?!" Eva shrieked.

"She's kinda good at seeing through illusions," Nagi hissed into her ear, before speaking in the same elaborately jovial tone as before. "Aw, come on, Arika-chan!" he said. (And that was a bit odd because they weren't speaking Japanese.) "Don't be so hard on her. Why, she was just telling me, a little while ago, how cool and sensuous she thought you were!"

Eva's head once more whipped around to glare daggers at Nagi. "I never said that! At no time have I ever said that! In no possible version of events would I EVER say something like that!"

"Such a cute liar she is!" Nagi insisted, grinning just a bit desperately.

Arika was silent. Evangeline turned around again to glare at her, and found that the fallen queen was regarding her with an expression best described as speculative. When she spoke again, there was a certain reluctance in her voice, but something else, too, something oddly unfamiliar to Eva. "She is not without a certain cuteness," Airka allowed.

Evangeline felt her jaw drop. "Are you kidding me?" she demanded.

"I generally leave the jests to those better suited to them," Arika replied, and reached out with a hand to gently caress Eva's cheek almost exactly as Nagi had, a few moments earlier.

"But, but, you, I -" the vampire stammered.

"Oh, come now," Arika interrupted, sounding slightly vexed. "I am familiar with your story, Maga Nosferatu. This is hardly the first time a woman has expressed interest in you. What was that girl's name, Miraclla?"

"Something like that," Evangeline admitted through clenched teeth, not at all happy to have one of the few things in her life that she genuinely regretted thrown in her face. Her curse was bad enough, and she hadn't wanted to spread it, but - how did the spoiler know all this, anyway? And why was she dropping down, heedless of the dirt on her skirt, and leaning in to press her lips to Evangeline's, and ohhhhhhh.

Elsewhere, the woman who bore the title of the Shield paused in her careful guardianship of the home of her master as her master slept. She shuddered momentarily, and wondered why she felt unaccountably inclined towards the notion of punching a certain person who hadn't been in her thoughts for a while, now. It was rather mysterious.

Arika was a very good kisser. Who knew? And she was also good at undressing people, surprisingly so for someone who probably had had servants to dress her growing up. (Admittedly, so had Eva, but she'd murdered most if not all of them, and anyway it had been longer ago, and so completely different.) And she was good with her hands, too, as Eva learned when one of them came up to cup her breast and squeeze it quite firmly, firm enough to provoke a moan from someone whose sense of touch was diminished by the illusion in which she was enmeshed.

"Oh, I think someone likes that," Nagi mused in response to that moan.

"I think someone likes hearing someone liking that," Eva responded, glancing over at his erection, risen up again. "Is the pretty princess -"

"Queen," Arika interjected, biting Eva's nipple for emphasis.

"Ah! - the, the queenly queen familiar with such base things as a tag-team blowjob?"

She looked up at her. "'Queenly queen'?" Arika asked, eyebrow raised again

"Hey, you come up with an adjective in a hurry and see how you do!" Eva yelled back, hiding her embarassment. Did the spoiler have to call attention to what had just happened like that?

Having succeeded in flustering her, Arika finally answered her question. "As it happens, before I was a queen, I was familiarized with all manner of intriguing activities while being initiated into -"

"So that's a yes, then?" Eva interjected, not being interested in the spoiler's backstory.

"Yes," Arika said coldly.

"Then let's do this thing," Eva said, pulling away from the other woman to go down before Nagi, leaving barely enough space for Arika to come in beside her, as she quickly did. Immediately, they began to caress his length with their tongues, working in synchrony that was actually quite surprising to Eva. (At least, it was surprising to the parts of Eva's mind that weren't well aware that this was just a dream, and that the person beside her was just part of her imagination. Why she was imagining this sort of thing went unexamined.)

As they worked upon him, Nagi's fingers ran through their hair, as he leaned back, said 'ah yeah' and similar expressions of satisfaction.

Something about that left Eva with a sense of dissatisfaction, for reasons she didn't quite understand. What she did understand was what to do about it. "Hey!" she said, rearing up. "Don't think that you can just lie there and let me do all the work, you big jerk, you -"

"Wasn't even considering it."

And then, quite before she could process those words, Eva felt pressure at her back and abruptly found herself considerably closer to the stupid mouth which had said them. Why that bitch, she thought, with that part of her mind which could think while being kissed even more passionately than she had been earlier. How dare she shove me out of the way so that she can have sole access to his wait what is she doing with her hands on my hips?

"And down she comes," she heard Arika say. Then she was pulled back down, and felt something both hard and soft pressing up against a portion of her anatomy that had been denuded just a few moments earlier. It moved up and into her, pressing against parts not disguised by the skin-deep illusion of maturity, parts that had not developed in her life for all that they'd been used quite a bit since her life ended.

Evangeline gasped as she felt Arika's gentle caress on her behind, but her attention was firmly fixed forward on the person who was pounding up into her. His face filled her vision. It was bathed in that smile she'd seen on his face during their fight.

 _How strange,_  she thought, with the few parts of either of her minds that could still think.  _He was never this happy when he was with me, except when he was fighting. Why am I only realizing this now?_  Her thoughts were banished almost completely as a tongue danced along the place where her body met his, joining their congress but only at a distance.

Her orgasm took almost no time at all, and it was one of the fiercest of her experience. Of course, it was only the dream of an orgasm, and not the real thing. Or so she chose to believe.

"Well, then," she heard Arika say, sometime later. "I suppose that it's time for me to be going, then."

"Huh?" she asked cleverly. "Aren't you going to -"

The fallen queen wasn't looking at her. "This has not been without its amusing moments, but I think I'm done here. I think that ... we are done, aren't we?" She was looking at Nagi, and her expression was bleak.

"Yeah," he said. "I think we are." His tone was every bit as dull as it had been while he was overlooking the village burning.

"Wait, what? You're, you're dumping him because of me?" Evangeline demanded.

"Do not flatter yourself, disciple of darkness," Arika said, still not looking at her. "You are a symptom of a much larger problem. I saw the village, Nagi. I saw what was left of it. And you did nothing."

"I'm tired of fighting," Nagi replied. "It's been my life for way too long, and it's stopped being fun a while ago."

That was ridiculous, Evangeline thought. He'd been, when they fought ... except they hadn't, had they? He'd employed tricks to end the fight it ever getting started. But, but ...

"You're not the person I fell in love with, anymore," Arika said, getting up and shaking her head. "If that one makes you happy, so be it. I wish you well. But I can't be a part of the path that you're walking."

"Well, that's fine. I won't be lonely," Nagi said, and he was smiling at Evangeline now, an empty smile but a genuine one.

"No," she said.

"Yeah," he said, nodding.

"No, I don't mean you won't be lonely, I mean, no, no to all of this." And she was shouting. "This isn't funny anymore! I don't like this dream anymore! Stop it! Stop it, do you hear me?!" Turning into a scream. "I said STOP!"

And the entire area around her, her own disguise and Nagi and Arika's forms as well, shattered into billions of fragments, leaving her in a vast white space.

But not alone.

"I am impressed, Kitty," the one with her said. "A powerful mage might be able to alter the course of a dream. But it takes an unfathomably powerful one to destroy it, simply by will alone. But then, you are what you are."

"You," she hissed, glaring at him with eyes turned into bright red slits.

"I really wonder why everyone always says that," Albireo Imma mused. "I mean, just what is someone supposed to say in response? 'No, it's not me'? Of course, I suppose that when it's a prelude to abuse -"

"You eggplant-faced mind-fucking perverted bastard son of a bitch!" Eva shrieked as she tried a spin kick to his head. He backstepped easily.

"- that's a different matter," Al continued as though he hadn't been rudely interrupted.

For an extended interval, they kept on like that, Eva trying to beat Al up and Al casually dodging her best efforts while making topical observations like an American stand-up comedian. Given the givens, it was impossible to tell how long the interval lasted, but Eva was rather tired at the end.

"What was the point of all that?" she finally hissed.

"Well, there are a number of possible explanations for why I did that, Kitty."

"Stop calling me that."

He didn't even bother to pretend he wasn't ignoring that. "The first, and likely most obvious, is that I was, to borrow a phrase from someone, trolling you."

"Well, obviously!" Evangeline sneered.

"I think I said that it was obvious," Al noted, just a bit reproachfully. "In any event, another possible explanation - really more of a set of possible explanations - is that I was trying to teach you a lesson that would be ultimately to your own benefit."

"Lesson!" the little vampire roared. "Where do you get off trying to teach me anything?"

"Well, this is a school, Kitty. And I'm one of the very few people in these parts who can expect you to call him sempai. Of course, it'd be cuter if you were wearing the uniform when you did it," he added, as an obvious afterthought. "Or possibly a school swimsuit ... oooh, cute image right there."

"There are no circumstances where I will ever call you sempai," Eva told him.

"... you realize that I am the sort of person who takes statements like that as a challenge, right?" Al said, eyes gleaming beneath the hood of his robe.

"In any event, what lesson were you trying to teach?" Evangeline asked, calming down a bit, largely because she didn't want him focusing on that supposed challenge.

"Oh, dear. If I'd been successful, you wouldn't have to ask that question," Al mused somberly.

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Of course, since that's the case, I don't really feel obligated to answer it," he added. "Which leads back to the trolling, since there were several lessons I could have been trying to teach. Like taking better care of one's shields against psychic intrusion, or the importance of using protection against STDs. Both of which you're a little deficient -"

"I am a vampire, I don't get STDs!"

"Orrrr," Albireo continued on, dragging out the word quite a bit. "I might have been trying to teach you that we like people for their qualities, and love them for their flaws ... and that which is which is very much a matter of opinion. In that little drama just now, I replaced one of Nagi's flaws in your view - the fact that he viewed you as a child - with something you might consider a quality - accepting you as woman full grown." Quite suddenly, he was leaning close enough to her that she could see his unsmiling face. "And you didn't care for that change."

Evangeline tried to hold his gaze, and failed. She looked away first. "No," she said. "I didn't like it. Is that it, then? For him to become the sort of person who'd love someone like me, he'd have to be the sort of person I wouldn't want in my life. Great lesson. You're a wonderful teacher," she told him, with sarcasm practically dripping from her mouth.

"Ah well," Al said, drawing back. "I could just have been trolling, after all."

"Where are you, anyway?" Eva asked.

"I have the strangest feeling that if I told you, you'd come find me and use my book's pages as toilet paper," Al mused.

"Stop reading my miiiind!"

"So I'll just say that I'm not too far away from where you are now and leave it at that. In any event ... it's time to wake up."

He proceeded to do a fingerflick at her forehead that made her dream image vanish, leaving him alone in the white zone. He looked around a bit wearily. "It's going to be hard to fix this for the next time I'll need it," he said to himself, considering the source of this havoc. He couldn't quite keep a sad smile from his face.

_Ah, Evangeline. So quick to go only half the distance. So unwilling to accept that other people might love you for your flaws that you build up your qualities until you become quite unlikable for them. You still have so much to learn. But then, who doesn't?_

_Good thing we're both stuck here at a school._

* * *

**Sunday Morning:**

She woke up panting hoarsely, most likely from rage she couldn't channel otherwise, covered in sweat clinging to her night clothes. A full body shudder rang through her as she sat back up on the bed, waiting for her fury to subside, for her breath to return to normal.

"Haa. Haa. Haa," she gasped, almost chomping at the air, one of her hands tightening on the covers.

Stupid jerk. Of all people, who was he to teach others lessons on morality?

And even if he had been virtuous enough to do that, why should she listen to him? Morality, ethics, those were all lies. The only code she needed was that of her own worth. That had been why she had sicced the ermine on Hakase, and why she had stopped him after that. It wasn't a matter of right or wrong. It was all a matter of -

She shook her head, growing tired of the pointless subject, conveniently in time to stop herself from realizing she did not have an answer for what replaced right and wrong in her eyes.

How annoying. There was too much wetness between her legs, leaving a slight spot at her crotch. Chachamaru wouldn't ask any questions, but she still would know, and somehow, for some reason, the mere idea of it bothered Evangeline. She'd have one of the mindless puppet maids wash these clothes instead.

Right now, she needed a bath to cleanse herself from all reminders of that idiotic dream. She felt completely dirty.

She sleepily marched for her closet, opening it wide, and then her eyes grew just as wide as the doors. Right before her, in front of all her clothes, someone had hung a school swimsuit her size, only in white. It even had her name on the chest. There were several other things pinned to it, all tied together. A folded shirt of an old fashioned school sailor fuku. A set of glasses. Fake cat ears. And a note.

Bristling with anger, she pulled the note close and read.

 _This was a favorite of Nagi's_ , it said, in a flowery, rather feminine handwriting that yet she still knew belonged to a man.  _And although I normally don't care much for his taste, I happen to share this one as well!_

She crumpled the note in a fist and dropped it down. She hoped with 'a favorite of theirs' he meant a favorite to look at, not to wear, although you never knew with those cretins...

Then, huffed to herself, she grabbed the glasses and put them on. Well, these, she could keep, at the very least. They were classy. Her eyesight was perfect, but she still liked to be seen wearing glasses when she was reading. Not that she needed to overcompensate for anything by looking intellectual. It was just it felt right.

Eh. Maybe she could give the swimsuit to Ayase or Miyazaki. Just so it wouldn't go wasted. Childish as it was, it still was made of a good fabric...

Chachamaru could use the cat ears...

By the time Chachamaru went to wake her up that morning, she found Evangeline asleep wearing the swimsuit, with the fuku shirt over it. The glasses on her face, and the nekomimi on her head. And a hand between her legs.

Wisely, the robot chose to silently close the door back and walk away for their special meeting of the Go Club by herself.

She knew that, this once, the Master wouldn't scold her for not waking her up.

* * *

 

 **Next:** Nekane?!


	3. OMAKE!

"HUH?!" Chisame, Ayaka and Natsumi all chorused.

"Ara ara ara, didn't I mention it before?" Chizuru asked, in a quite clueless tone. "I researched a bit on the subject, and found the right term isn't 'mourning wood', but 'morning wood'. It tends to happen to young men while waking up, and it's perfectly normal. It'll go down by itself if you just leave it alone."

"H-how ... when ... why ... HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN THIS?!" Chisame screamed.

"I intended to tell you earlier, but you weren't listening at all, and eventually I believe I just forgot it with everything else going on," the Naba heiress piously said. "But well, there isn't any point in crying over spilled milk right now, is it?" And she smiled in a small and adorable fashion.

Chisame loomed over her, a truly vicious and dark aura surrounding her, not too unlike that of Evangeline. "N-A-B-A!"

"Oh, oh, oh my!" Chizuru put a hand on her cheek. There were moments when even her Scary Saintly Smile wouldn't work, and she recognized this as one of them.

As the sounds of violence ensued, Ayaka blushed and closed her eyes, exhaling a loving sigh. "Still, despite everything, I'm so glad my first time could be with Negi-sensei!"

"Y-Yeah, me too." Natsumi blushed even more, lowering her head.

Chisame paused in her current activities, gave them a long and hard look, and then, seeing they meant it, she added her own opinion, glasses growing eye-obscuring again. "I suppose ... I suppose there are no better candidates anywhere around here for that kind of ... thing ..."

Chizuru rose back elegantly, and still smiling in a truly beatific way despite being covered by random bandages and bruises, with an arm in a cast and a black swollen eye. "Oh, and I'm just so happy for all of you," she said, very sincerely.


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief word from Darkenning:
> 
> In an anthology doujinshi volume compiling the first _Eva-Nyan Goranshin_ doujin and the first two _Mahora Gakuen Tyûtôbu 3A_ doujins, the authors also saw fit to include an interquel chapter bridging those first two stories of Negi's sexual adventures with his students. It's not really a remarkable tale, except for the ending, which reveals that Negi's cousin Nekane is apparently sexually fantasizing about him as well. When OverMaster and I adapted these stories for his Unequally Rational and Emotional continuity, however, it was decided to take this section of the story in a slightly different direction.
> 
> This is the result.

The whole stage is dark until a single, huge spotlight falls on a beautiful, young red-haired girl, wearing a yellow summer dress and standing on the middle of it all.

"Good evening. I'm Soryu Asuka Langley. You might remember me from hit TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion, its adaptation manga, Angelic Days, Ikari Shinji Raising Project, the EVA and Friends Stripping Instrumentality Project mahjongg game, Evangelion Campus Apocalypse, Nobody Dies, Re-Take, and Rebuild of Evangelion, where I played Shikinami Asuka. So you know I have more street cred than any child-loving 3-A creep, okay?"

She folds her arms, her blue eyes half closed now, and calculatingly taps her foot twice before continuing.

"So, to recap for those of you slow in the memory department: In recent chapters, that goody two shoes twerp, Negi Springfield, made love to his students Hasegawa Chisame, Murakami Natsumi and Yukihiro Ayaka, while that pervy cow, Naba Chizuru, watched on. Then, in a perhaps unrelated incident, assuming how much you believe in fate, I don't, by the way, Negi and Chisame's roommate Hakase Satomi had sex with her girlfriend, lucky bimbo Shiina Sakurako, in the house of fellow classmate Evangeline McDowell. That's some nerve. I know a lot of people talk crap about Eva-san, but if two people started doing the horizontal mambo in my house just because they felt like it, I'd rip their damn crotches off before kicking them out. I mean, seriously!"

Asuka humphes in a very tsundere way, straightening her skirt down before going on.

"After that, Evangeline was left kind of itchy for pervy stuff herself, and she didn't find solace until a mysterious entity entered her dreams and well, had her entered too. To be fair, now that dream, I can understand. I'll admit the twerp's dad was hot, from what I've seen backstage. Not as hot as Kaji-sama, but not bad at all either! Gott in himmel, I'd spend years looking for him too!"

Realizing she has spoken too much, she coughs and fixes her posture back to a ... bitchier one. Sorry, there isn't a better word to use here.

"Anyway, I'm sure the twerp won't grow as hot as him! If 3-A is waiting for that, they are gonna to be disappointed, in my opinion. Not like many of them have waited or are going to wait, anyway. Seriously, as idiotic as that Asuna girl is, at least she's the only one there with enough taste to prefer real men to someone who just came out of nursery! Then again, maybe I've jinxed it just by saying this and ..."

She shakes her head to herself, pinching her nose's bridge.

"You know what? Forget it. And I don't need to remind you you're about to read graphic scenes of highly controversial sex, and you shouldn't ever try to do what you're about to witness here, I mean, not with any kids whatsoever, right? So you were fairly warned. The Great Soryu Asuka Langley is a woman of honor and class, bitches!"

She smiles, finally unfolding her arms and resting a fist on a hip.

"And unlike the two jerks before me, I don't need to kill anyone onstage to make a killing at my performance!"

Abruptly, a giant purple foot descends from nowhere and steps on her, just as the lights go out.

* * *

"What's wrong with you?"

The question, suddenly coming out of nowhere, rattled Nekane. Normally, this storage room was a completely safe place to sit down, take brief rests, rub her aching legs, and even cry a bit without being disturbed.

In all her weeks at the job, she'd never been found there. Fearing the worst, she tried to compose herself, straightening up and blurting the words out even before she identified the person who had just talked to her. "W-Wrong? W-What do you mean, 'wrong' --" She saw the lazy green eyes meeting her own, the messy mop of long wavy golden hair, the large cleavage, the overall careless dressing style, and finished, "-- Hoshii-san?"

The girl made a tiny yawn and shrugged. "I don't know. I thought I heard you sobbing, but I could have dreamed it."

A small part of Nekane's mind wondered if Hoshii Miki-san dreamed of her crying often, and why she would do so. The rest of it was thankful that the successful but indolent idol didn't seem to care one way or another.

"I, I was just looking for some documents I seem to have lost," Nekane lied badly.

"Oh. I was sleeping." Miki yawned again, admitting it without the slightest concern. "I just found this to be a very quiet place when no one's crying. Outside's too noisy, with the twins and Hibiki-chan and everyone else."

Nekane could have pointed out Miki never seemed to have any problems sleeping between practices and auditions despite that. However, she wasn't the kind to push her luck.

Her arrival in Japan, the start of her work as an interpreter and translator for Daikanyama Hatoko and the rest of her co-workers in the agency, the rocky beginning of the Black Rose Baron ... life had felt like too much, too fast for Nekane. She was used to a quiet and peaceful life, outside of those months after the attack on the village, which she preferred not to remember. She had found it was hard to deal with the locals, both in her civilian life and her secret one, but she endured it all without complaint for Negi's sake.

Honestly, she liked most of the people at her work place, even the egocentric Iori-san and the scatter brained Hatoko-san. Often their speech was too fast for her to follow, let alone following the crazy ideas behind it. (Negi had joked he often felt the same way about his students when she had admitted that part to him.) But she felt honest fondness for them. Miki-san was no exception. But the mere idea she, or any other of them, might learn her darkest secrets, terrified her to no end.

"You look troubled, all the same." Miki lay on her side on the old couch they had stashed there, looking at Nekane through half closed eyelids.

"I'm just in pain from some old wounds," Nekane said, rubbing the thin line under her right pantyhose. "That's all."

"Oh."

Nekane rubbed her nose and walked for the door. "N-Now, if you'll excuse me, please --"

"You can stay, if you need rest," Miki sat up and patted the couch, her head hanging back like that of a ragdoll. She looked like she could fall asleep again any moment now. "Everyone's busy with the preparations for the dance number."

"Then, shouldn't we--"

"I have it all mastered," Miki waved a hand up and down the way a puppet would. "And they don't need you for that either."

Nekane sighed. "All the same, I think I'll go see if I can make myself useful."

"You strain yourself too much." Miki smacked her lips, cuddling into a small self-hugging ball. "You ought to try giving yourself what you really want for a change."

What she really wanted?

She was already doing what she truly wanted, wasn't she? She was giving her all for Negi. As long as she was helping to make his life better, even if indirectly, she'd be happy.

That was the reason why she had traveled all the way to Japan, wasn't it?

She had stopped at the door, her head hanging down, her hand on the handle.

_Negi. ___

Negi was growing up into a healthy, strong man, surrounded by friends, so that was enough to make her happy, wasn't it?

He was going to be like his father, which was what he wanted. All the more reason to be glad for him.

Like his father.

And it dawned on Nekane she didn't really want him to be like Uncle. Oh, sure, physically there was no problem at all with him being as tall, strong and imposing like Uncle, but in terms of personality, they were very different and they had to stay that way. They had to.

Because otherwise, he'd take the same doomed path, and Nekane would never see him again. And the pain would return multiplied tenfold.

She could take anything but that.

Miki-san had started snoring softly, so Nekane left the room in complete silence.

She'd need to find herself a new place in the building.

* * *

"Ah!"

Chizuru was mildly startled when she heard the loud gasp coming from the bathroom. She left the kitchen in the middle of making breakfast and hurried to Natsumi's side, finding her standing before the mirror, her eyes low.

"Natsumi?" She touched the smaller girl on a shoulder from behind, warily looking down at her.

Her friend turned her head towards her slowly, with a faint, relieved smile. "I ... I just had my period," she said. "I, I think I'm safe."

Chizuru exhaled very deeply, now the complete opposite of her fears had been realized. And she put on the saintly smile again. "Well! See? I told you those home remedies would come in handy! Aren't you happy?"

"Very," Natsumi sniffled with a jerky nod. "I mean, I'd love to, you know, someday, with Negi-sensei, but ... definitely not now!"

"Definitely," Chizuru nodded sagely. "Then, now that's out of the way, I assume you will continue to pursue him?"

Natsumi pouted. " _Pursue_ is a very ugly word, Chizu-ne."

"Most accurate words are, Natsumi. Listen; you were the second girl to ever ... be with him. That's a precious link, even if it was born from a flawed decision. And he's a young man of honor, so he won't leave you behind if you play your cards right."

Natsumi blushed beet red. "D-Do you think so?"

Chizuru nodded, now putting both hands on her shoulders. "Yes. You won't find a better candidate anywhere; you just have to wait for him to be ready for the whole experience. But be sure of snaring him properly from now." And there she was again, with the ugly but accurate terminology. "Otherwise, others will steal him from you, because the competition is intense and abundant."

Natsumi steeled her nerves and nodded. "R-Roger."

"Well, now you're feeling better, and we've established there's no time to waste, what if we visit him today?" Chizuru clasped her hands together. "It's a free day, and a lovely one to boot. Nothing serious," she said, being quick to notice Natsumi's luminiscent blush. "We'll simply talk, come closer as good friends, spend some innocent time together."

Briefly, she had the impression she was needling fate again, but she waved it off mentally. Lightning didn't strike twice in the same spot, right?

Natsumi nodded with round nervous eyes. "O-O-Okay. That's, that sounds nice, I guess."

"That's great," Chizuru said, and offered Natsumi her cellphone. "Well, let's call Ayaka, then."

"Iinchou?! But why?! I thought I was supposed to --"

"Natsumi," Chizuru said very seriously. "You're my best friend, but Ayaka is the second best. I'll support you all the way over her, but not to the extent of actively harming her chances; she'd never forgive me, and with good reason. You had Negi-sensei the same day, together. So you, and yes, even Chisame-san, need to compete fairly, or else nothing will be truly settled. That's why you must do this; let Negi-sensei himself decide this instead of circumstances."

"I guess that makes sense, but ... but I could never compete with Iinchou! She's gorgeous, intelligent and rich, while I'm... mediocre, plain and gray! She'll upstage me without even trying!"

"Nonsense. You're a clever, beautiful and warm young lady."

"If you were a man, Would you pick me for a date over her?" Natsumi gave her a more critical than usual look. "Actually, you can probably drop the first part of that question."

Chizuru recoiled briefly. Again, Natsumi had found her weak spot. Her insinuations that evening at the bath hadn't been a random incident. The girl suspected the truth, at least. She decided to play it honest for once. "You know I like Ayaka."

Natsumi sighed. "The signs are there. M-mind, I never asked since I didn't want to intrude ... and I doubt I'd have noticed it if I wasn't living with you, but ... yeah. I've known for a while now."

"And that's why I thought it'd be better if Ayaka moved out," Naba reasoned. "I didn't want to ruin our friendship, in the event she noticed my feelings."

"Then why are you doing this? Why are you rooting for her in this, too? Why?"

Chizuru shook her head. "I know Ayaka never could love me that way."

"And now you're being the same as you accuse me of being! You'll never know if you don't try it, Chizu-nee!"

"She loves Negi-sensei," she said. _And Asuna,_ she thought, although it went unsaid.

Natsumi grabbed her hands, much to her faintly blushing shock. "You can make her change her mind. Anyone would love you, Chizu-nee."

No, that was a lie, Chizuru told herself. She was a lie, as a matter of fact. In truth, she was a horrible person, a liar, a deceiver, a pervert and ... and ...

But then, looking at Natsumi's hopeful face, she forced a smile for her sake.

"Very well. All the more reason to call Ayaka, then. We'll call this a double date of sorts," she said, with practiced playfulness. "Just don't let any of them know it."

Natsumi smiled oh so wonderfully. "That's it, Chizu-nee!"

* * *

"Iinchou, you have a call!" Makie said, peeking into the shower stall and holding Ayaka's cellphone up. "It's Natsumi-chan!"

"Seriously?" the blond heiress tilted her head back to her, not bothering to cover herself since it was only, well, Makie. "What could she want at this time?"

Makie shrugged, handing it at her. "I don't know. But she sounds pretty nervous."

Then she just stood there waiting while Ayaka picked up the phone, until her roommate's fierce glare finally made her get the hint. Then she walked out the bathroom door and shut it behind her.

Only then did Ayaka speak into the phone. "Hello? Murakami-san?"

"Um, hello, Iinchou," Natsumi indeed sounded even more awkward than usual. "First of all, ah, I wanted to give you good news. I just had my period, so ... so ... you know!"

Great news indeed. Ayaka allowed herself a contented sigh. "Oh, I see! I'm glad for you ... for all of us, actually, Murakami-san."

"Th-Thank you. And, eh, not like I want to snoop, but ... how about you?"

"Two days ago. My moment hasn't come yet," the rich girl replied, very sure of herself. Her tone made clear to Natsumi she looked forward to an eventual 'moment'.

Natsumi could only hope Ayaka wasn't aiming for anything immediate. No, of course not. The idea had scared Ayaka just as much as the others that night. "Oh. Oh, sure. I mean, Chizu-nee and me were going to visit Negi-sensei today, to give him the good news, so Chizu-nee suggested you could come along, and since you have good news of your own too ..."

Ayaka hummed and nodded to herself. Between all the classes and then the training sessions at the resort, she had had no time to tell Negi and Chisame yet. In the Academy, Negi was always busy, and at the resort, Evangeline had ears everywhere. "Sounds good. Very nice of you." She had to admit, as far as rivals went, Natsumi was at least a respectable one. Better than Kakizaki or Kasuga, in any case. "What if we meet outside of your room in one hour, then head there together?"

"Are, are you sure you aren't busy?"

"The Equestrian club doesn't have any meetings today, and we just arrived from a session at Evangeline's resort. I had nothing to do this afternoon, actually."

"Evangeline's resort?" Natsumi asked.

"One of those matters involving us magical adepts," Ayaka handwaved it. "I'll explain it later," she added, after some hesitation.

Natsumi paused as well. "Okay. I'd really appreciate that. By the way, just to make things clear ... We aren't going there to have sex again."

"Of course not," Ayaka said, sounding offended by the idea, but Natsumi knew that particular tone of hers well. It was the same one Ayaka used when acting offended after someone talked about her friendship with Asuna. That already worried the actress, but she knew she'd only worsen things if she even hinted at that. "That, that was wonderful, but it also was ... a mistake. It could have ruined our lives."

"Do you think Chisame's safe too?"

"I hope so. There mere idea of her bearing Negi-sensei's child terrifies me." She paced across the shower, biting on a finger. "I would, I mean, either of us would be better mothers than her."

"I think the core issue is Negi-sensei isn't ready to be a father yet, no matter who's the mother," Natsumi had to remind her.

"Ah, yes, yes, of course! That goes without saying, Murakami-san!" She wasn't too convincing.

"Good. Then, in a hour, right?"

"That's correct. Wait for me there, and make sure to wear something beautiful. I'll wear my best, and I don't want my rival in love to look like someone unfit that status."

Natsumi's voice on the telephone was silent for a moment, and then faintly incredulous when she spoke again "You think of _me_ as ... your rival?"

"Naturally! You went just as far as I did, didn't you? I'm a woman of honor, and I won't fall as low as to deny your achievements. Right now, I only recognize you and Chisame-san as my actual rivals for Sensei's heart!" _And sweet, sweet, glorious boyhood ..._

"Uh, uh, okay, thank you ... for the honor of that ... recognition, Iinchou ..." And she meant it. Being told by Ayaka herself that she considered her, mousy, plain her, a romantic threat -- wow! It already had done more for her self esteem than Chizuru's earlier speech.

Meanwhile, a stunned Makie was covering her mouth with both hands and walking away from the bathroom door, where she had been with her ear stuck to it, listening carefully.

She might be Baka Pink, but she still had a woman's intuition when it came to such subjects. She had understood just enough from Iinchou's words to guess what had happened.

When Ayaka finally came out of the shower, rubbing herself dry, Makie didn't have the courage to confront her on it, though. Not even when she saw her selecting her best and sexiest underwear.

* * *

"Good morning!" Nekane said cheerfully. "I hope I'm not intruding!"

In truth, the morning almost was over. She had received most of the day off after urgent pleas from several of the girls had forced them to cancel today's session. Producer-san had, for the first time ever since Nekane had met him, gotten angry over this, although perhaps Just Extremely Frustrated would have been a better term for his mood. Regardless, he was a fair man and admitted it hadn't been Nekane's fault, so he sent her home and wished her a good afternoon. She didn't have anyone else to spend her day with, so she decided to visit Negi, of course.

"Sister!" Negi's face brightened oh so wonderfully. He left his pen and the papers he had been grading aside and ran to her encounter, hugging her midsection while she still was at their doorstep. "What a wonderful surprise!"

"Oh, Nekane-san. Welcome," Chisame slowly lifted her gaze from her laptop, giving the blonde a light bow of her head.

Chisame thought anyone who put on a mask and a stupid costume to fight evil had to be insane. She had met Batman, and that man was Chisame's textbook definition of Insane Scary Bastard. She had met the other world's Ala Alba, and she thought even her own counterpart Calculator-san was insane, although much less than the rest of her team. And when she had seen the mysterious, androgynous Black Rose Baron unmasked during the fight with that awful Graff Herrman demon, beholding the face of Negi's sister, she had known the girl had to be crazy too. Still, she had helped save their lives, so she deserved respect. Insane, yes, but that didn't mean she wasn't brave and noble, and Chisame had to begrudgingly admit it.

"Good morning, Hasegawa-san. Hakase-san!" she greeted in Satomi's direction. Hiding behind a wide, wide sheet of schematics she was studying and sitting on top of a pile of greasy spare parts, Satomi only made a token handwave in Nekane's direction.

"Hey!" Chisame called out. "She's talking to you! Show her some respect!"

Nekane laughed it off. "Never mind, Hasegawa-san. Negi was the exact same way when he was studying. That's the sign of a bright mind concentrated on its job."

"Precisely," Satomi's voice calmly said from behind the unfolded paper that seemed about to devour her. She had never been a believer in false modesty. "It's excellent to verify there are still some who understand that."

Nekane looked around. "Oh? Chamo isn't at home?"

"He's been spending a lot of time with his new girlfriend lately," Chisame snarked. "Much better for us, if you ask me."

"How are things going for you, Sister?" Negi asked eagerly.

"Oh, I'm adapting to my new work place rather quickly. It's very rewarding, actually. And yours continues being the same, I assume."

The boy nodded without any hesitation. "Yes! Everyone keeps giving more and more of their best! We have some great plans laid out for the School Festival, and our grades are almost at the same level we reached for last term's final test!"

The older girl smiled and played with his hair fondly. "That's great to hear!" And she grew more serious. "And, about Uncle Nagi?"

Negi drooped down. "Nothing new yet. Even Skuld-san is stumped about his whereabouts."

_Or pretends to be, _Chisame thought grimly.__

Nekane sighed. "I see. I'm afraid my researches haven't uncovered much, either. But I'm sure that soon, soon ..."

"Yes, I know," Negi regained his smile.

"What about that blond woman you saw?" Nekane asked now. She still was troubled about her. Judging from Negi's description, she was a dead ringer for Negi's late mother, but of course, Lady Arika was long dead and buried. Nekane wanted to believe it was a coincidence, but still, the fact that woman had striven so far to protect Negi, even to slay the Count for him, without any hint of regret, was somewhat troubling. The demon might have deserved it, after all he did to Nekane's father and the villagers, but Nekane still couldn't help but find an execution in cold blood chilling. "Have you seen her after that?"

"Asuna-san says she was stalking her twice during her newspaper delivery," Negi told her. "Once, Asuna-san tried to attack her, but the woman just parried her blows and left without striking back. I don't think she has anything against us. It's as if she wanted to protect us for some reason."

"I see," Nekane nodded very slowly. She felt tempted to share her extravagant notions with Negi, but the least he needed now was more concerns added to his already tall pile. "Well, since I'm here, what if I help you with lunch? Don't tell me you don't have anything ready yet!"

"Um, we were going to lunch at Chao Bao Zi, actually," Hakase piped in.

"Oh, no. Let me cook you an old fashioned Welsh lunch," Nekane said, strangely confident in her ability to do so with Japanese ingredients. "It's been a long while since you had one, hasn't it, Negi?"

The boy's mouth watered. "Oh, yes, definitely!"

Huh, Chisame thought. Well, she surely was a great cook, much better than her. Cuckoo or not, she was the complete domestic type when she wasn't running around in drag and tossing black roses around.

Not that Chisame cared about either facet, either way.

* * *

When Ayaka, Natsumi and Chizuru made it to Negi's living quarters, they saw the unexpected newcomer just as soon as Satomi had opened the door for them. There she was, sitting at the other side of the living room table, opposite Negi and Chisame.

Natsumi, always one to notice others' beauty over her own, thought she was devastatingly beautiful, very similar to Ayaka but with a few features, like the shape of her nose and subtle cheekbones, that were more like Asuna's.

"Oh! Nekane-san!" The Class Rep recognized her quite readily. "It's-It's great to see you again! Oh, have you met my former roommates, Naba Chizuru and Murakami Natsumi?" She gestured towards the other two girls.

"Good afternoon, Ayaka-san." The taller, slightly older female bowed very politely, her voice tingled with a soft Welsh accent. "Pleased to meet you, Naba-san, Murakami-san. I'm Nekane Springfield, Negi's sister."

Natsumi half-hiccuped, her cheeks growing pink. "Ah, oh, pleased to meet you too, Nekane-san!" she said, while Chizuru just smiled and nodded, letting her have the dance floor, so to speak. "Sorry, I'd have brought something if I had known --"

"It's okay," the angelic beauty waved a hand to ease her down. "I don't need any presents, or being met with fancy clothes. Negi has me a lot about you two. You, Naba-san, are just as elegant as he said, and you're just as cute, Natsumi-san."

"C-C-Cute? He said I was cute?" Natsumi choked on her own saliva. Nekane felt, for some reason, a mild sign of danger turn on in her head at that reaction, but she politely ignored it.

"Girls!" Negi rose up from his sitting spot, his face betraying some nervousness, while Chisame remained quiet and seated. "This is... a pleasant but unexpected visit. There isn't anything wrong going on, is it?"

"Oh, nothing at all, Negi-sensei!" Ayaka smiled charmingly. "This is a rather joyous day! And since it was so beautiful and uneventful, what better way to spend it than with you, we thought? I see Nekane-san had the same idea."

"Ah, ha ha, yes, you could say so," Nekane laughed gently. "Negi and me had not met for months, so it's like we are getting to know each other all over again, and I can't have enough of that. He has changed a lot in this short time, actually. He acts much more confident, for starters."

Or at least, he acted much more confident before this day. For some reason, he was very pale and nerve-wrecked today. A mother knew those things, and Nekane came close enough to qualify for that trait.

"Ah, please, sit down, then," Negi invited the new arrivals. "I'll go for more tea and biscuits."

"I'll help you if it isn't a bother, Sensei," Chizuru offered, gently pulling him along to the kitchen with her, while Natsumi gulped and sat down next to a stable Ayaka. Once Chizuru was sure Nekane wouldn't hear them, she grabbed Negi by the shoulders. "Relax. Let's all enjoy this day, okay? No, we haven't come with any announcement that would threaten your job, so calm down. Will you do that, please?"

Looking as if a gigantic weight had just been lifted off his shoulders, he replied with a nod and a voice pumped up with newly found life. "Okay. You're right, of course. Thank you very much, Chizuru-san."

She smiled, and then, on a whim, kissed his forehead. He blushed, but said nothing. On another whim, all the while berating herself inwardly, her face came lower, and she stole a short peck at Negi's lips. He didn't react with the panic she had expected, and frankly, she didn't know if that made her feel good or bad. "Sorry about that," she excused herself. "I ... I don't know what came over me."

"It's, it's okay, I've done far worse ... I mean, not that this was --"

"I know. Again, don't worry, Sensei. You are the one who is at the least fault here. Now let's hurry, or your sister will start wondering about us ..."

They quickly prepared more drink and snacks and returned to the living room to rejoin the others.

"So, what do you do for a living, Nekane-san?" Chizuru pleasantly asked over pastries, breaking the somewhat tense silence over the table, one to which only Satomi seemed oblivious.

"Oh," Nekane said. "Actually, I work at a music Idol agency, 765 Pro. Technically, my job description is being Daikanyama Hatoko-san's interpreter and assistant, but due to a shortage of staff, I have also became a jack of all trades," she had to laugh a little. "We are struggling to grow better and stronger every day, much like Negi is." After a very brief pause, she amended, "Stronger as a teacher, that is, of course!"

"765 Pro? Never heard of it," said Ayaka.

"Neither have I," Natsumi had to admit, "But I have heard of Hatoko-san! Is it true she's difficult to work with?"

"She is ... very passionate about everything she does," Nekane replied diplomatically. "Sometimes it's hard to keep up with her, and our opinions aren't always on the same wavelength, but she's a good person and a great artist."

The girls all nodded slowly, all of them but Hakase doing the logical translation to plain Japanese ("she's a bitch, but the job is the job") in their minds.

Nekane looked for something in her purse and pulled out a DVD.

"I brought a demo of the girls' latest English song so Negi could watch it. My job there is evaluating the girls' English performance, and informing Producer-san on their flaws and how they can improve upon them. You're also welcome to watch it with us, of course," she told them.

"Oh, Natsumi will love it, I'm sure," Chizuru easily said. "She is in theatre, so she's always interested on learning new tricks on stage performance. Aren't you, Natsumi?"

"Ah, yes, of course, although of course, it, it isn't the same thing," the shy girl stammered, wondering when she could have her chat with Negi at last.

* * *

"ARE YOU READY!! I'M LADY!! Hajimeyou!"

During her time with the company, Nekane had tried to correct several glaring mistakes in the songs' attempts at English, but while she had hammered several of the worst ones out, her advice still went unheard often. The audience didn't know English, after all, so why to bother to offend the songwriters and their fragile egos just for the sake of correct grammar no one would even notice?

Nekane was not that naive, so she understood those reasons from a purely objective viewpoint, but still, as the sister of a teacher and a straight A student in her own time, it still annoyed her to no end.

"START Hajimaru kyou no STAGE CHECK!! MAIKU-MEIKU-Ishou! IT'S SHOW TIME TRY CHALLENGE!!"

As the girls danced and posed happily across the screen, Natsumi stared carefully, evaluating their stage presence and domain of the scene. Chisame was more appreciative of their outfits, while Negi seemed to be mostly focused on the girls themselves, and the youthful sparks in their eyes.

That bothered Nekane for some reason. Negi had never seemed that aware of girls' physical appeal. Every clumsy attempts by Anya to be noticed only yielded failure. Then again, none of the girls in the agency were Anyas. They were models and idols in training for a reason. They had different but powerful charms, from Haruka-chan's innocent and bubbly behavior to Hibiki's raw and healthy enthusiasm.

To anyone else, the difference in Negi's attitude wouldn't have been noticeable. The slightly new way his lips curved up while smiling. It was the same way Uncle's lips had smirked when he teased Nekane's mother, and then ran from the angry woman who was trying to hit him with a frying pan while laughing his foolish head off. A shudder ran down Nekane's spine. It was subtle, but it was there, and Nekane got the signs while she, in turn, was analyzed by Chizuru.

Chizuru softly smirked at that. Nekane had just stiffened much like Taiga-san did around Chizuru's father, whenever he complimented a waitress or even caressed one of Chizuru's cheeks. Obtuse as Taiga-san was, she still had powerful feminine instincts. Chizuru doubted she knew what she suspected, but she was sure that somehow, somewhere deep within her, Taiga-san somehow _knew_. (And somewhere deep within her, Chizuru gloried in that fact.)

"ARE YOU READY!! I'M LADY!! Uta wo utaou! Hitotsu hitotsu!"

Ayaka pointed at a thin, petite girl with long brown hair. "Isn't this Minase Iori-san?"

"Indeed," Nekane nodded. "She is quickly becoming one of our best recruits."

"Why in the world would she go and do something like that?" Ayaka asked. "Her father is a business partner of mine's. She has all the money or fame she could want!"

"Maybe she just likes the stage? There is, after all, nothing wrong at all with that," Natsumi pointed out, rather sharply. Sex with an off-limits boy had, if nothing else, made her more convinced she could take risks.

"Everyone has a calling," Nekane mused. "Some of us find it very early, some of us much later, and some sad souls never do." And at this point she sighed. "But those callings aren't always tied to our places of origin."

Chizuru nodded. "And that would be both your case and your brother's, wouldn't it, Nekane-san?"

Negi tried to laugh it off. "Ah, ha ha, yes! I mean, we are very far from the hills of Wales now, aren't we?"

"Yes," Nekane said, distant for a moment, missing the winds that only blew in her land, missing the company of the Magus, Anya, Mr. Waver, Mrs. Donet, Mr. Gottwald, and everyone else. "Although, as long as Negi is near me, the most important part of Wales will always be there for me."

It was said in a very sincerely joyous tone, enough to make Ayaka, Chisame and Natsumi take brief notice.

Chizuru only added it to her inner list.

Meanwhile, Nekane was continuing to reflect on the strangeness of the situation. Negi's initial awkwardness had been strange enough. She had initially put it down to simple discomfort at having her as a guest, which was certainly a different dynamic than their relationship had ever had before. The same fussy perfectionism that made him such an excellent magician and teacher might very well make him nervous about things that might go wrong while entertaining someone, especially someone whose opinion he valued, like herself.

But then these girls had shown up, and things had gotten stranger.

If it had just been one of the girls -- Natsumi, for example -- whose behavior had sent up warning flags in her mind, she mightn't have been bothered. It would be perfectly understandable if Negi, an exotic foreigner put in a position of authority, became the object of a crush by one or more of his young students, particularly the more insecure among them. And there was nothing wrong with that, as long as he didn't do anything to encourage it -- which of course he wouldn't -- or take advantage of it -- which of course he wouldn't!

Of course not!

The problem was, she was getting the same sort of warning flags from Ayaka, too. And Chisame. There were just little things that they said, or did. The way their eyes lingered on Negi when he spoke. The way their faces tightened when he looked away from them. Little pauses in which more was said by the silence than was ever said by the words before and after it.

It was a bit more difficult to say, 'well, it's only natural' when it came to the two of them. Neither of them were nearly as insecure-seeming as Natsumi was, and so neither of them should be as susceptible to infatuations of that sort as she was. (At least, that was Nekane's impression. Maybe she was wrong.) Then again, as she well knew, 'should' had very little do with things when it came to relationships. The whole 'week-long idyll with a mildly psychotic super-powered mercenary' had taught her that, if nothing else had.

And then there was Chizuru.

If it was hard for Nekane to believe that a mature young woman like Ayaka was actually just in her last year of junior high school, then that difficulty became even more pronounced when it came to the even more ... mature Chizuru. Oh, why not be honest in the privacy of her mind? She was using 'mature' as a euphemism for 'busty'. Nekane certainly hadn't been nearly as busty when she was their age. At least, she didn't think so. Not that she was jealous or anything. That would be ridiculous.

But there was more to either of these younger women than looks. She'd come to quickly realize that Ayaka was rather clever in her brief exposure to her -- at least, it would be reasonable to describe her as "book smart", but lacking in worldly wisdom. In that, she was far more typical for a young woman, particularly one who had led a rather sheltered existence as a rich family's daughter.

Yet from what she understood, the Naba girl was from a background very nearly as wealthy, and so should -- that word again! -- have been every bit as sheltered. And she clearly wasn't. Just in this brief interval, Nekane had seen signs that she was far, far ahead of Ayaka in the area of 'worldly wisdom'. She'd been the first to start nodding in comprehension when Nekane had politely spoken about Hatoko, and there had been other hints of an understanding and experience uncommon in anyone of her age throughout their time together, watching the recordings.

Except that she wasn't really watching the recordings, as the others were. She was mostly watching Nekane. And the stress of her regard was quite vexing, to say the least. At least there was no hostility behind that look, but there was a sense that she was being evaluated and examined as she had not been since her days as a student. A sense that this girl looked on her as some sort of rival. Or possibly as just an obstacle, considering the strange coldness she thought that she saw in that gaze, from time to time.

She had to be imagining things.

A glance down at her wristwatch made Nekane blanch suddenly. She'd spent far more time doing this than she'd planned! She was going to have to hurry if she wanted to get to her next meeting. "I'm afraid that I have to be going," she announced.

"Eh? But you've barely been here at all!" Negi protested, turning to look at her.

She smiled wanly. "I know, I know, but ... well, I will certainly try to make more time to come back some other time, but ..." She spread her hands, helplessly, letting the silence speak for her.

"I understand," he said, nodding, but still looking more than a bit unhappy. She ached for his unhappiness, even as she took a strange sort of pleasure in it.

Then Chisame coughed, and she felt her face grow stiff as Negi turned away from her to look at his roommate. "It occurs to me that a proper English gentleman would probably offer to show a lady to the door," the sour young lady observed.

"Oh, right," Negi said, shaking his head as he got up to offer to do just that. Nekane felt the stiffness fade as he turned back to her, and her eyes lingered on him as he spoke.

And all the while, Chizuru watched.

And wondered.

* * *

It had been so, so good to see Nekane again. Although he had started missing her a bit less once he had grown accustomed to Mahora, Negi still felt nostalgic for his cousin often. Seeing her once more, sitting across the table pouring him tea just like in the old times, had made his heart feel much warmer, happier and relaxed, even though she had to leave again far sooner than he would have liked.

Really, all they were missing was Anya. The boy couldn't help wondering about Anya's reactions to meeting 3-A, and the simple mental images of it made him chuckle to himself. Just her reaction to Chizuru-san alone ...

Of course, thoughts of Chizuru-san brought him immediate memories of that night two weeks ago, and his chuckling stopped, replaced by shame. Not before Nekane noticed he had been chuckling as he escorted her to the door, however.

"What's so funny, Negi?" the tall blonde asked.

"Oh, no, it's nothing," he said quickly. "It's just, just it makes me so happy, having you here. I just wish Anya could be with us, too."

He was reasonably sure, as he said that, that Chisame-san and the others couldn't hear him, back in the room's main area. Negi appreciated his primary partner's willingness to understand that he needed a certain amount of private time with his "big sister", knowing well Misa-san or Misora-san would have acted differently. But still, part of him was sharp enough to be vaguely aware Chisame-san was, of late, more possessive of him than before. Ever since ... that. Better not let her hear about any interest in Anya from him, even if it was a purely friendly one. Kotaro was right about something, women tended to misread things.

"I'll try to get Anya come visit during the summer break," Nekane promised. "You'll have a lot to explain to her, however," she chided him softly, and he had to nod with an awkward smile. "She's bound to find your ... choices during your training questionable."

Negi's head hung lower. "And maybe she'd be right."

His sister figure patted his shoulder, tenderly. "You've done what you had to do. To keep yourself and your pupils safe. I won't hold that against you, and I'm sure neither will Anya, actually. You know it takes her a little to understand things like that, often, but she'll get over it."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes! Mostly, she'll only be jealous."

"Ah?"

"Of how quickly you became so strong, most likely more powerful than her," Nekane amended. In her defense, that part was true too. "You hold the strength of all your partners, Negi, and in turn, they hold yours as well. Just remember, while it's acceptable to have several provisional partners if the circumstances demand for it ..." And she sighed and grew serious. "... there are lines you mustn't cross."

"L-Lines?"

She nodded. "There are borders a teacher just can't cross with his students. That's something you must always remember, not only as a professor, but also as an English gentleman." And her smile returned. "But of course, I know I can rest easy knowing you'll always keep that in mind!"

He nodded, hoping his sudden gulp wasn't as noticeable as he feared. "Right. Of course I will, Nekane."

She placed her warm, soft right hand on his and squeezed it lovingly. Negi's heart skipped a bit. Since that night, the slightest touch with any female made him react that way. Instinctively, it disturbed him to realize the same also held true in Nekane's case. As a matter of fact, it felt like even more of a jolt than casual contact with anyone else but Chisame, Ayaka or Natsumi.

He'd keep it in mind, naturally. But oh, if only he could actually follow that mandate, instead of only remembering it. And so he sighed again, deeply, once she was out the door.

"By any chance have you crossed a line with one of your students recently?" Satomi asked curiously from behind him. "Is that why you're sighing like that?"

"Hauuu!" Negi shouted as his hands went up in the air, before he whirled to face his other roommate, who was standing behind him with a speculative look on her face.

"Oh!" she said, a bit startled by his reaction. "I was just kidding, sensei, there's no real need for you to panic like that."

"Oh," he said, calming a bit. "K-kidding. Of course you were. Wait, you were kidding?"

"Yes, I'm experimenting with humor, now, too," she explained. "Humor has been described as a social lubricant, and the importance of lubricants has been made very clear to me recently."

Once again, Negi had the distinct feeling that there were aspects of what had just been said that he didn't really understand. But it probably wouldn't be a good idea to simply ask about them. "I see. Are you heading out too?"

She nodded. "Yes, I have some more work to do with Chachamaru, and also I have to talk with Haruna-san about something she wanted me to investigate. I probably won't be back until much later. Please excuse me," she said, then paused at the door. "You haven't crossed any lines, have you?" she asked again.

"I, I don't think the joke really improves with repetition, Hakase-san," Negi said uneasily.

"Oh, I wasn't joking that time. That's genuine curiousity," she explained, then shook her head "I really need to work on my delivery, I suppose."

And then she was gone. After a few minutes of staring after her, Negi shook his head and trudged back to the main room, where Chisame-san and the others were waiting.

* * *

With Nekane and Satomi gone, the conversation around the table turned to matters that weren't for their ears. The most pressing issue of the day, of course, was the fact that Natsumi and Ayaka had both experienced what could be euphemistically referred to as the burden of womanhood recently.

Negi blushed to hear that, but also sighed with relief. "Thank goodness," he said, then quickly added, "Of course, I'm not being happy that you're experiencing this particular set of difficulties, since it would be wrong to wish them on you, but, well, I mean ... what do I mean?" he asked Chisame, abruptly.

"You mean you're glad you didn't knock us up," she told him.

"I mean I'm glad I -- wait, no, that's far too self-serving and blunt!" Negi protested.

"It's fine, sensei," Ayaka interjected, determined not to let Chisame control the conversation. "And, excuse me, but from your use of the word 'us', should we then take it as spoken that you too have --"

"Not yet," Chisame said, cutting her off. "But I'm seeing signs that it'll show up in the next few days. My acne's worse than usual, and, well ..." She trailed off, looking uncomfortably down at her breasts, which were, Ayaka abruptly noticed, a tiny bit larger than normal. (Not that she spent any time at all considering the size of the other girl's breasts, or comparing them to her own, or studying comparative photos, or anything like that.)

Ayaka took a moment to consider what Chisame was telling her. "Oh," she said a moment later. "Are you saying that you have PMS? Wait, how can you tell? How is that different from your normal --"

"Would you like to leave this room feet first?" Chisame growled, clutching the side of the table where she sat.

"No fighting, please!" Negi begged.

Once Chisame and Ayaka had calmed down -- well, as calmed down as either of these volatile young women were likely to get -- Chizuru spoke up. "In any event, Sensei, it occurs to me that we ought to be taking precautions so that such concerns do not afflict us in the future, should it happen that such things happen again. While, on our part, we can employ medicine for this purpose --"

"Ah, actually, not all of us can," Ayaka interjected with a rasp. "I have recently discovered that I have a difficulty in that area --"

_**Nosebleedbegone: Make sure that when the time is right, your excitement only shows in your actions. Warning -- may have harmful drug interactions with aspirin, sleep aids, and birth control pills.** _

_Ayaka looked up at her bathroom mirror, holding the two bottles in either hand. "Well. This is problematic, isn't it?" she said to her reflection, who nodded._

Chisame's right eyebrow twitched. "And you stopped taking birth control just because of that?"

"... it seemed the best course of action at the time. I thought at that age he couldn't produce children yet anyway, because he hadn't matured enough, right? It was only logical!"

Chisame put a hand on her own face, and it stayed there.

"Ahem. In any event, Negi-kun, regardless of Ayaka's ... difficulties ... you ought to be taking precautions as well. Are there any birth control spells?" Chizuru asked, knowing perfectly well that there were.

Negi had flushed brightly. "Well, um, yes, I-I believe that there are, but I don't know them, and researching them could be a bit difficult. And in any event, I'm not sure that I should be casting that sort of spell!"

"Oh?" Chizuru asked, eyebrow raised. "Then you want to get all of us pregnant, then? You cad, you," she added dryly.

_All of us?_ thought Natsumi.

"What? No!" Negi replied quickly. "I just, I just mean that, as your teacher, I shouldn't be having sex with you, as my students. It's not, it's not --"

"Um, but, um, sensei," Natsumi spoke up at last, blushing almost as brightly as Negi himself. "I, uh, well, I like you, sensei ... and so I want to have sex with you a lot more. I mean, I can understand why you wouldn't want to have sex with me, but, well, it didn't start out very well, but once we got going, it was really, really good." Actually, even more brightly. "At least, that's what I thought. Did you not like doing it with me?"

On some level, Chizuru was aghast at this blatant emotional manipulation from her roommate. She had clearly been picking up some of Chizuru's own tricks. Of course, that also made her feel a bit proud and nostalgic, in the old 'they grow up so fast' sort of way.

Meanwhile, Negi was panicking. "Well, no! I mean, yes, I did, but, but ..." He broke off, looked around the table at the girls seated there, and then looked down at his pants. "Oh dear," he said.

They were tenting.

"Ah," said Ayaka, staring at the tenting trousers with predictable laser-like intensity.

Chisame finally lowered the hand she'd been holding over her face all this while to glance down at Negi, sitting beside her. "For pity's sake," she said disgustedly. "Wasn't what we did last night enough to keep that thing down for a while?"

"... 'what we did last night'?" chorused Ayaka and Natsumi, somewhat more loudly that Chisame's original statement. Chizuru said nothing, but looked rather amused.

"Uhhhh," Chisame said, conscious of the fact that she had really stepped in it this time. "W-well, you see, he, uh, he had a stiffy, and I, well, I thought, 'who knows, maybe it is 'mourning' and not 'morning'?'"

"Excuse me?" said Chizuru, all amusement vanishing as she remembered getting beaten up over that little misunderstanding.

"And, uh," Chisame continued, somewhat desperately. "Also, also I wanted to make sure that he, he wasn't going to be waving that thing around Hakase, since, you know, she's a lot more sensitive than she lets on, and it, it might upset her."

"... she is?" Negi asked, confusedly.

Chisame collapsed. "Thanks for the support, Negi," she growled from the floor.

"You're welcome," he said, still confused.

Before Chisame could get up and indicate her displeasure with this conversation, Ayaka had stood up and jumped right over the table to press up against Negi. "Oh, sensei! I'm so, so sorry! You had to go through all this with no one to help you!"

"Uh, actually, Iin-- ahem, Ayaka-san, Chisame-san was --"

"I know, it must have been awful!" Ayaka sympathized. "I'm so embarassed that I wasn't there to help you like I promised that I would. But, you'll let me help you now, right?" She looked deeply into his eyes as her hands went down to his belt buckle.

"Okay," Negi said, sounding just a little bit resigned.

"Ugh," Natsumi groaned quietly, just loud enough for Chizuru to hear. "How manipulative can you get?"

Chizuru gave her a sideways look, but said nothing.

It was honestly a bit amazing how quickly Ayaka was able to get his belt buckle undone, his shorts clear of his erection, her own panties out of the way of her entrance, and her shirt open so that her breasts spilled out of their cups. She was so skillful for a person who hadn't been doing this very long. As though she'd somehow been practicing every possible variation on an encounter with him in her mind, to the point where the actual actions were second nature now. But he didn't really have time to consider it before she was mounting him.

"Does it feel good, sensei?" she asked as she rocked back and forth, up and down, on his erection. "Does it feel good inside me? Am I still as tight as I was before?" I bloody well ought to be, after all those exercises.

"It, it feels wonderful!" Negi had to admit. He didn't want to address the question of tightness, since he'd gotten the impression that his comments on the subject last time had not gone over all that well. Besides, there were more important matters at hand. "It, it actually feels too good! Please slow down a little, or I might, might --"

"Might what, sensei?" Ayaka asked, leaning down so that she could face him. "Might what?"

"I might, you know, finish, before you do, and --"

"You mean cum, Sensei?" Ayaka asked, eyes shining. Not slowing down in the least. "You're worried that you might cum before I do? That's so sweet, sensei! You are such a gentleman! And you're also worried that you might cum inside of me, aren't you?"

"Yes!" Negi agreed. If she was going to put it that baldly, maybe she'd be willing to pull back and let him --

"It's all right, sensei!" she cried out, still not slowing her regular movements down. "I want you to come inside of me! I want to thrill in the sensation of the liqueur of your boyhood filling the decanter of my womanhood!"

"Oh, geh!" Chisame groaned at the awfulness of Ayaka's prose while watching the sex act unfold before her. She cast a glance at Natsumi and Chizuru to see whether they were as confounded by it as she was, only to do a doubletake as she realized that they, unlike herself, had already gotten undressed while watching. Natsumi was just staring at the coupling with bated breath, while Chizuru was openly diddling herelf while watching the two of them.

Wait. No, she wasn't watching the two of them. Her eyes were solely on --

Oh. So she'd been right, then. Well. That was interesting.

_Gosh, it's hot in here,_ Chisame thought, conscious of the fact that she was lying to herself as she began to loosen her clothes.

Negi, oblivious to all of this, was only aware of what Ayaka had just said. Well, that, and the sensations she was causing in his lower organs. "But, wait, you said, you said that you weren't using --"

"It's all right, sensei!" Ayaka assured him, unceasing in her movements. "This is a safe day, remember."

"Oh," he said, believing her. "Then --"

"And if it wasn't, I'd still want you to cum inside of me!" she said. "It would be okay, sensei! I'd just marry one of the rich heirs my parents keep throwing at me, and raise your child in a grotesque loveless parody of a marriage!"

_Wherever they were, certainly not together, Ayaka's parents both sneezed. Had a certain statue in Wales not been, you know, a statue, he would have sneezed too._

"Ehhhh?" Negi gasped, eyes like black dots.

"Or you could always make an honest woman of me instead!" Ayaka added quickly, eyes gleaming. "By marrying me yourself, I mean!"

"Okay, that's enough of that!" Chisame barked, standing up to walk over to them, only to stumble over Chizuru's inconveniently placed legs, which promptly grabbed ahold of her ankles in a remarkably strong scissor lock, all without Chizuru ever breaking her stare at Ayaka.

"But -- but --" Negi said, as he reached up to try hopelessly to push Ayaka up and off of him before it was too late. As it happened, he was only able to press up against the most protuberant portions of Ayaka's upper chest.

"Of course, I wouldn't mind if you did hold off, so that we can cum together and our beautiful baby can be conceived in the wonder of org-- ah, sensei, the way you squeeze my breasts like that! It's so divine!"

Between that, and her own fingers gently petting her clitoris while she rocked and rolled on top of Negi, Ayaka came to fulfillment within moments. And her thrashing and wailing pushed him the rest of the way over as well, so that despite his misgivings, his liqueur did in fact fill her decanter.

Ayaka fell back, panting and grinning. "More?" she asked faintly.

"My turn!" Natsumi said quickly, before Chisame could say anything. Well, anything other than the litany of "Naba, let go of my legs", interspersed with profane utterances, that she'd been saying all this while. She didn't bother to get to her feet as she scampered across the floor to his side and began kissing his face gently yet forcefully.

"You didn't really like that, did you, sensei?" she whispered into his ear.

Negi froze. How had she known?

"It's okay, I understand," she continued to whisper, all the while decorating his ear with kisses. "Iinchou is very bossy, isn't she? When you're with her, she makes you do everything to make her happy."

That ... was an interesting perspective on matters, and Negi wasn't sure that it was quite accurate. But, well, it wasn't as though he could really offer up a forceful refutation of her position under the circumstances, was it?

"And you were worried about, well, that," Natsumi continued. "It's okay, sensei. You won't have to worry about any of that with me. I'm going to make you feel good, without any of that. Okay?"

Oh. Now she wanted an answer. Well, then, he should refuse. He should insist on stopping this right now. He should be a good teacher. And all he'd have to do would be to look in those sweet, gentle eyes and break her heart by doing so.

He was a complete failure as a teacher.

"Okay," he said.

Smiling sweetly, Natsumi kissed him one more time on the mouth, before starting to kiss down his face and chest, tickling at his bellybutton with her tongue, until she reached his once more erect dick. And without even the slightest affectation of maidenly hesitation, she swooped down to take it in her mouth, keeping her eyes on his all the while.

She began to experiment, paying close attention to his reactions as she licked and suckled at different parts of the erection. It wasn't really easy, but then she didn't expect it to be. He was English and thus reserved, after all. It would have been a lot easier to do if she'd been able to read his mind, but of course that was the sort of thing that belonged in a different kind of fantasy than this.

_Hm. Actually ... well, never mind that now._

Nonetheless, Natsumi was a perceptive and sharp girl, and she could tell when Negi was getting more pleasure from what she was doing, even if it wasn't as precise as she might have wished. So it would be easy to bring him to an orgasm from this.

_Or,_ thought a part of her mind that Natsumi referred to as her "inner Chizu-ne", _it would be easy to keep him on the boil for a long, long time, never quite allowing him to climax ..._

_Hmmmmmm._

* * *

Nekane Springfield didn't realize she had left the DVD with the girls' screen tests at Negi's flat until she was halfway to her own home.

Oh, no. Between her Black Rose Baron exploits and her visit, she'd had no time to make herself a copy, and Producer-san would freak out if he learned she had lost the original. She was fairly sure Negi would keep it safe if he found it, but Hakase-san was so absent minded she was certain to place some piece of heavy machinery on it if it wasn't found soon, or worse. She had to go back and retrieve it, and the sooner the better since she didn't want to intrude into Negi's dinner after lunching with him. They were going to think she was some sort of stalker.

On that subject, it was strange Chisame-san's admirer hadn't been at the flat today. But Nekane barely thought about it.

She tried to call him on the cell phone she'd had pressed on her when she began working at the agency. "Negi, it's me. I think I left the disc with the auditions I showed you there, are you ... please pick up?"

Unfortunately for her, Chizuru had made sure to leave the answering machine on to prevent any interruptions to the current teacher-student bonding session, so Nekane didn't get the answer she had been waiting for. They really needed to buy him a cellphone, she decided.

Well, he had given her a spare key. Even if they had left for some reason, she was welcome to enter, retrieve her belonging, and leave quietly before they returned and were disturbed by her presence.

Nekane got off the bus and took another one to head back to the campus. All the while chastising herself. Why had she been so careless? Had she let Ayaka's words bother her that much? That was silly; she had to stop imagining such absurd scenarios. The girls were eccentric, but also well meaning. She had to stop thinking of them as ...

As ...

No, that was even more ridiculous. Negi loved her in his own way and always would love her. And Nekane, of course, was happy with it. Why wouldn't she be? Sooner or later, he'd find himself a good partner and wife and she'd also ... she'd also ...

No. She wasn't the marrying type, right?

It was dumb, but there was something telling her she couldn't ever marry.

Because if she ever did, it'd only be to try and make up for her loss of her only family. Her only loves. And she didn't want to inflict that upon anyone.

She was better off alone, she decided.

She kept her head low for the rest of the trip back.

* * *

Well. Twenty minutes, according to the clock on the wall, which Natsumi could see out of the corner of her eye. That was sort of impressive. If it wasn't a world record -- okay, it was definitely not a world record -- it was at least a personal best for her.

And Negi was definitely enjoying it. Well, okay, she couldn't be sure of that. He was gasping and sighing at what she did, but his eyes were a million miles away. She suspected that he might be out of his mind with pleasure.

Which would be flattering if it were true, but also a little scary. Maybe she shouldn't listen to the inner Chizu-ne so much.

"Natsumi-chan," said the outer Chizu-ne, speaking sweetly but with a certain distinct menace in her tone. "Isn't that about enough of that? You don't want to be the sort of girl who monopolizes Negi-sensei, do you?"

"Yes, you should let me have another turn!" Ayaka said, completely oblivious to the irony.

There was a faint sigh, the sound of legs separating, and then a scuttling noise, and shouting and the sounds of fighting in the background. Natsumi tried to block it out as she applied everything that she'd learned through her experimentation to the task of making him cum.

It worked like a fucking charm.

She swallowed most of it, then sat up, delicately licking the small droplets that had escaped her mouth to land on the hand that had been holding him steady, before turning to look at Ayaka and Chisame's melee encounter and say, cool as cucumber, "Next?"

Ayaka was, despite herself, once again somewhat impressed by how well Chisame was able to stand up to her in a fight. Her technique was abysmal, of course, but in terms of sheer power, she was almost in monkey-girl class. Of course, her win-loss record with said monkey girl was pretty close to even. (At least, her version of the record. The monkey girl insisted on counting certain incidents which anyone could see shouldn't count.)

So she was really just playing with her, not taking their confrontation all that seriously, as she easily blocked every megaton punch with lazy ease. If she'd had a fan handy, she might have used it as a parrying tool to emphasize how easy it all was. But the whole mostly naked thing meant that her collection of fans were elsewhere at the moment. Alas.

Still, it was a fun way to kill some time until Natsumi finished up, at which point Ayaka was determined that she was going to go again, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to stop her from doing --

And then Natsumi said 'Next', and Ayaka was distracted enough that Chisame's megaton punch wasn't parried. When she woke up a few minutes later, she decided that didn't count as a loss.

Meanwhile, Chisame unclenched her fist and turned around to glare at Negi. "I'll go," she snarled.

"That's about what I figured," Natsumi said, and quickly got out of the way of the angry young woman.

"Chisame-san?" Negi asked weakly of his roommate, looming above him red-faced. "Is something --"

"Two girls," she seethed. "Two girls, and this --" She lifted up her bare foot and brought it up to his boyhood, stretching out the span between her big toe and the next one over so that it was wide enough for her to hold the small shaft between them. "-- this is still hard! You are such a Casanova!"

Her foot moved slightly up and down as she continued to rant. "You're gonna get stabbed some day! And the sad part is gonna be that whatever poor girl stabs you will probably be trying to stab some other girl who made her jealous, and you'll get in the way, and they'll both be wrecked by what happened!"

Negi, torn between the heretofore normal mixture of arousal and shame he'd been feeling up until now and the new wave of mild terror he was experiencing, was moved to observe, "This is a really well-developed scenario you're describing."

"I've had a lot of time to think about it!" Chisame snapped. She let go of him, causing him to sigh in relief for a moment before she descended on him fully and enveloped him inside of her. "Well, I guess then it's up to me to get you to finish for the day. Don't anybody thank me for the selfless service."

"Th-thank you?" Negi stammered as she began to rock on him.

"I said don't thank me! Why don't you listen?! So, so frustrating!" she cried as she pulled his mouth up to her breast, forcing the nipple into his mouth.

He pulled back, looking up at her bewilderedly. "Chisame-sa--" Negi broke off, swallowed, and then continued. "Chisame, do you not like doing this?"

"I never said that!" she snapped.

"So you do like it?"

"I never said that either!"

"Well, which is it?" he asked, feeling a bit frustrated himself now.

"How should I know!" Chisame howled, leaning back on the upward stroke.

For reasons that he couldn't quite articulate, Negi found himself pushing up and forward, making Chisame go even further back until her rear end was resting on the room's floor and he was pumping down into her. "You're the only one who does!" he protested.

For a moment, she only looked up at him in stunned silence, perhaps amazed at the reversal. "Fine," she finally breathed. "Fine, then. I love this. I love all of this! It's sick and it's wrong and I love it anyway! I love feeling you up inside me and I love feeling you against me and god help me I love watching you and I love it all! Give it to me!"

Her legs came up and wrapped around his rear, and he couldn't pull out or back if he tried. So he didn't, and pounded into her without respite.

And then, right on the edge of his release, he heard the most terrible sound in the world -- the door opening.

"Negi, I'm back, I --"

Then dead silence.

As Negi stared in horror at the no less horrified Nekane standing in the doorway, he found the girl whose genitalia were wrapped around his stiffened in place, also struck by a sudden primal fear.

The stiffening made her inner walls contract, and they squeezed Negi, making him moan and spill into Chisame as Nekane's jaw hung even looser now.

Well. That had been an agonizing moment for him. Not without a sharp, intense pleasure mixed with (brought on by?) the shame, though.

Although that only made it all even more mortifying.

* * *

"Here are the results of the tests," Hakase said, handing Haruna a long sheet of paper full of complex formulas and calculations. "The biological sample you brought was indeed spider webbing, but not from any species we have identified. We could determine the origin from its overall genetic structure, but beyond that, we can't specify the variety of arachnid that produced it."

Under the laboratory's bright lights, Haruna read down the sheet carefully, barely making anything out of all its annotations. "So, basically --"

Hakase smiled briefly. "Yes, we have located a completely new species in Mahora's grounds! Congratulations on this historic discovery! I can get you in contact with important researchers in the Japanese Arachnological Society."

The stacked mangaka grimaced. "That isn't what I meant! There was just too much of that stuff on my feet. No normal spider can produce that much webbing. We must be talking about a magical monster here!"

"Oh." Hakase drooped. "Then we can't share our discovery with the proper academic authorities."

"Guess not," Haruna hummed. "By the way, Prof, there's something wrong with you today? You seem easier to depress than usual. You didn't even blink an eye over losing access to all of Mad Hatter's tech at Kyoto."

"Whatever gave you that impression? I'm perfectly fine, both physically and emotionally."

Haruna decided to skip the standard ironic crack on that last part and pointed at her own hair antennae.

Hakase frowned. "Oh, come now. I've told you, that theory has no scientific merit whatsoever. Your hair simply cannot be any sort of detector for other people's emotional status."

"They haven't failed me yet! So tell me, what's troubling you?"

Satomi looked aside, somewhat cutely. "That's simply groundless and ridiculous --"

"Problems with Saku-chan?"

"O-Of course not!"

"Then with Chisame?"

There was no reply.

"It's Chisame, isn't it?" Haruna needled her.

Satomi grumbled, twirling around on her chair to look away from the librarian. Even she understood the need to keep that kind of information from Haruna.

Haruna breathed in, frustrated. If Nodoka had just made her Pactio already, she'd only have to manipul-- subtly convince her to read Hakase's mind, for everyone's ultimate well-being, of course. But until that glorious day came, she'd have to do it the good, old-fashioned but really kinda hard way. "C'mon. I can't help you if you don't tell me."

"All the more reason to not telling you anything, beyond the fact there's nothing at all to tell you."

"Prof-chan." Haruna's tone became solemn. "If you tell me, I'll swear on my Saotome Honor to never tell another soul."

Satomi looked at her again. From what Sakurako had told her on the subject, the Saotome Honor was the one thing Haruna would never treat as a joke. Something about martial arts vows or similar nonsense. "While I could point out that the existence of the soul is an unprovable hypothesis, I'll assume that you meant person instead. But are you being serious?"

"With this hand on my heart," Paru said, placing her left hand over that breast, "I swear on my honor as heiress of the Anything Goes Saotome Dojo to keep silent about what you'll entrust me with!" All the while, she kept her right hand's fingers crossed behind her back in the Tendo-Saotome Maneuver Against Unwanted Honor Promises. She was her father's daughter, but also her mother's.

Satomi wasn't privy to such martial arts secrets, so she complied. "Very well. If you say so, I suppose it's okay."

"So dish!"

"All right, yes. Earlier today, Nekane-san visited us. And I overheard her telling Negi-sensei it was okay having Pactios, but he shouldn't cross the line with his pupils."

"That's all? That's exactly what Nekane-Oneesan would tell him. No big deal."

"Well, there's the fact Negi-sensei looked very troubled after Nekane-san left. It was as if he was haunted and tormented after hearing that."

Haruna's eyes glinted behind her obscured glasses. "Oh-ho-ho! I see!"

"You promised!"

"I know, relax! That was all?"

"Yes."

"Well, it ain't much," the mangaka admitted, allowing there wasn't much of a point in telling anyone yet. "You know Negi-kun loves to overreact. I'd bet he thinks 'sleeping with girls' means 'sleeping in the same bed as girls'!"

"But it does mean that, right?"

Haruna sighed. "Forget it. Are you afraid he might be doing it with Chisame?"

"Well, not exactly. I know she is the kind of individual that would never resort to such activities as would threaten her personal concept of normalcy, but ... he's closer to her than to anyone else, isn't he?"

"But you room with them. If they were doing that, you'd have to notice it. Not even you can be that absent minded!"

"I suppose you are right," the scientist mused, not offended by what had been hammered into her as a truth by her peers since her childhood.

Haruna nodded. "Don't worry your cute big brained head! If something else arises --" She chuckled at her own double entendre, which Satomi naturally missed completely. "-- just call me and I'll help you to cope!"

"Thank you, Haruna-san. Good luck with your arachnid infestation, as well."

"Oh, leave it all to me. I've got a full set of Doctor Octopus tentacles for that little spider if she bothers me again."

"She?"

"Don't ask."

* * *

"-- really, I suppose that I cannot really claim to be surprised by this development," Nekane said as she paced back and forth in front of the five of them. "Appalled and revolted, certainly, but not really in any way surprised. Since coming here -- no, in fact, before that, since learning practically anything about this land -- I have been made well-aware that Japan is a nation of perverts. So it is not surprising that, on being sent here, Negi should be drawn into perversion. I am not surprised, but I am apalled and revolted, and --"

"What delivery," Natsumi marvelled aloud, though quietly. "She's been doing this for nearly three minutes without pausing for a breath. Such mastery of the rhetorical arts!"

"It is quite remarkable," agreed Ayaka. "I wonder if she would be willing to instruct us in her technique."

"Please stop complimenting the person who's going to send us to jail," Chisame groaned.

"Maybe it won't be so bad being an ermine," Negi speculated dazedly. "Chamo-kun seems to like it." The sheer horror of having been seen crossing every conceivable line by his sister, less than an hour after she'd gently told him not to do that, left him unable to really process anything that anyone else was saying.

Chizuru had been silent through all of this, but as Nekane embarked on yet another verbal description of the other perversions she'd encountered in Japan, she finally decided that there would never be a better moment than the one about to make itself clear. She'd spent the last few minutes quietly developing a desperate strategy. Now came the time to see whether it would work or not. And that required action.

So she stood up from where she had been seated.

"Sit down, young woman, I am not finished --" Nekane started to say, turning to look directly at her. That was convenient, as it presented an easy target for Chizuru's firm slap across her face. The sound of her hand's impact on Nekane's cheek seemed to echo through the room like a branch being snapped.

Nekane reeled back a step, and held up a hand to the reddened cheek as she glared murderously at Chizuru. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

The only daughter of the Naba household nodded slightly. "Thank you," she said. "Clearly my theory was correct."

"Theory?" Nekane said quietly.

"You see, Nekane-san," Chizuru began to explain, calmly and evenly, as though she were not naked and standing before a fully clothed woman whom she had just struck. "In a physical sense, you really remind me of someone I care about a great deal. Someone whom I've come to know very well. Not as well as I'd wish, but very well nonetheless."

"What's she talking about?" Ayaka whispered to Natsumi.

"Oh, for --"

Paying them no mind, Chizuru pressed on. "I suppose that it's natural to wonder whether someone who reminds you of a certain person in some ways will remind you of that person in others. Of course, most of the time, you're disappointed in the result. But not in this case. You are very like this person in more than simply appearance. You act like her as well."

"What --" Nekane started to ask.

"Your anger," Chizuru interrupted. "When actually angry, this person becomes very quiet and focused. Most people don't realize that. Most people see only what they think is her anger, when she acts much like you were earlier, ranting and carrying on. But as I've said, I know this person very well. And when she acts like that, she's actually expressing something other than anger. She's being jealous. Envious. Covetous." Now Chizuru took a step towards Nekane, who stepped back and ran into the kitchen counter as a result. With the same lightning speed as with her slaps, Chizuru's hands snaked out and grabbed ahold of the counter on either side of Nekane's hips as she continued. "And when _you_ act like that ... So. Are. You."

"Seriously, who is she talking about?" Ayaka asked, a bit louder.

"Oh, come on, even _I_ get it," Chisame growled. "Negi even --"

"I could run and play in the fields of flowers ..."

"Never mind," Chisame sighed.

"You, you are sick!" protested Nekane, cut off from movement by Chizuru's last motion, and stunned by both that action and by the girl's words.

"Perhaps," Chizuru mused, then shook her head. "No, there's no perhaps about it, I'm sad to say. But this sick girl's lips have tasted those of your dear little brother. And they were sweet."

With that last word, Chizuru pushed her face up at Nekane, and before the older girl could turn away, their lips were slammed together.

When Chizuru at last pulled away, she murmured, just loud enough for Nekane to hear, "And now so have yours, second-handedly. Wouldn't you rather have it from the source?"

For a few moments, Nekane could only stare at the Naba girl, her utter confusion battling the one concrete impulse in her mind, which was of course to wrap her hands around Chizuru's neck and begin smothering the life out of her. Other options, including but not limited to giving her a slap across the face in response to the one she'd been given a few moments ago, came and went in her imagination.

With the tiny remaining part of her mind able to perform critical evaluation, she was more than a bit disturbed by how many of those options involved throwing the girl to the ground and performing acts not only violent but lewd on her person.

Before she could do any of the things she was imagining though, Nekane was distracted by a faint, "Sister?" coming from Negi. She turned to look at him, and was horrified by two things. The first was that his face was clearly expressing a great deal of fear when he regarded her. That would have been bad enough -- she never, ever wanted him to be afraid of anything, especially not her! -- but it was combined with the fact that she could tell, from a glance at another portion of her anatomy, that he was also aroused, likely by what he had just seen the Naba girl doing to her.

Whatever she might have in mind for Chizuru would have to wait. With a forceful gesture, Nekane beckoned for her to step out of her way. Unhesitatingly, Chizuru did so, almost swaggering back to sit down beside Ayaka once more, affecting to be oblivious to the bewildered look her friend was giving her.

Nekane decided to pay them no mind, though. Her attention was, and had to be, fully on Negi. She took a deep breath before speaking to him, trying to sound calmer than she was. "Negi," she said. "We need to have a little talk in private. But we're not likely to get any privacy, under the circumstances. So. I need you to ... pretend, I suppose, is the word that I'm looking for ... pretend that it's just you and I in this room right now. These ... people ... are not here, right now. They can't do anything to either of us. I won't let them. Okay?" She didn't wait for an answer to that interrogative. "In particular, they cannot stop you from telling me the truth. You remember, I told you that it was very important to tell the truth?"

"Yes, and --" Negi started to answer.

"Good," Nekane interrupted. "That's good. And I have always, always tried to tell you the truth. I haven't always told you everything, but I have never, ever, willingly told you anything that I knew to be false. So I need you to tell me the truth, now." She settled down into a kneeling posture before him, feeling a blush creeping up her cheeks as she considered how this might look, but needing to look right into his eyes at close range. "Are these people forcing you to do things you don't want to do?"

Negi considered giving the simple and straightforward answer to the question, which was, of course, Yes. But Nekane hadn't asked for a simple and straightforward answer. She'd asked for the truth. And telling her the truth meant saying, "No." And so he did.

"Could you elaborate on that, please?" Nekane asked, more quietly than she had been speaking before.

For a wild moment, he considered just answering monosyllabically, "yes" and making her ask more probing questions. But sense won out. "When it started ... they thought I was in danger, and wanted to help me. They were wrong, but, but I accepted their help. No one forced me. Not really. I could have said no. I could have run. And I didn't."

"I see," Nekane said. "And later? When you knew that you didn't need their help?"

Negi was silent. "I still could have run," he eventually said. "I still could have said no."

"All right," Nekane said after a pause of her own. "Negi, this is going to be a very difficult question for you to answer, but I still need you to tell me the whole truth. Do you, do you like doing this sort of thing, Negi?"

It would be so easy to say no! But it wouldn't be the whole truth. "Yes," he admitted. "I ... like doing things that make the people I care about happy. And ... Ayaka-san, Natsumi-san, and Chisame ... all like this sort of thing."

"How come she gets yobisute and I don't?" Ayaka and Natsumi mumured in chorus. Chisame was too busy blushing to the roots of her hair to say anything.

"Doing this sort of thing, with me, makes them happy. And that's what I want to do. So ... I guess, that I do like doing this sort of thing." And Negi fell silent.

When Nekane spoke again, her voice was thick with unshed tears. "I'm a complete failure."

"Eh?" Negi asked, head jerking up. "No! Sister, you --"

"I tried so hard to raise you so that you'd have respect for your father, without being like him," she said, hand over her eyes. "But I couldn't manage that. And it's my fault, not yours."

"No, no, it's -- wait, like my father?" Negi said, torn between two of his major impulses. "Accept all responsibility for anything bad that happens in my immediate vicinity" was warring with "become like my father", and the latter was winning. "What do you mean by that? Father was like this, too?"

"Yes," Nekane admitted. "He was a wild Welsh wizard, not a proper English gentleman. I'm sure that you've figured this out by now, but you clearly didn't realize that it extended to his relationships as well. He was ... lecherous," she said, the word coming out like teeth being pulled.

Negi blinked in stunned amazement. "I had no idea," he admitted. "But, but then surely, it must be --"

"No," Nekane interrupted, shaking her head. "It's my fault. I was a fool to think that someone as perverted as I am could possibly make you into something pure, when I'm so impure. Everything that girl said about me is true. I even ... before you even left for Japan, I was even thinking about it, thinking about doing things to you, so that you'd stay with me. Maybe I should have," she sobbed. "Maybe then you wouldn't have fallen for the wiles of these hoydens."

"What's a hoyden?" Natsumi asked Chizuru quietly.

"A slut," Chizuru answered just as quietly.

"Oh. Hey!"

"Sister!" Negi protested. "Please, please, don't be so hard on yourself." He rose to his knees and stumbled over to her. "Dwi'n dy garu di, chwaer fawr," he said, abandoning Japanese for the moment as he looked into her eyes.

She met his gaze, breathing deeply ... and then she kissed him, passionately.

Despite the fact that he was naked, despite Nekane's confession of only a few moments ago, despite all of his experience to this point, Negi was still terribly surprised that things were turning sexual. He would have said 'Eh?' or something -- well, no, it would have been 'eh' -- if his tongue hadn't been very busy wrestling with Nekane's tongue. As it was all that he could do was grunt a bit as he felt her arms wrapping around him.

And lifting him up from the ground as she stood up and started walking.

That gave him the impetus needed to pull back and say, "Eh? Uh ... Sister? What, what are you doing?"

"I am taking you to bed, Negi," she told him. "I would rather it was my own bed, back in our home, but yours will suffice. In truth, any will suffice."

"But, but --" Negi stammered, glancing over at the girls who'd been watching all of this. He immediately realized that no help was likely to come from that direction. Natsumi, Chisame and Ayaka were all staring in his direction with jaws dropped about as far as Nekane's had been when she'd walked in on them. For her part, Chizuru was watching with a rather disturbing, almost triumphant, smile.

Nekane carried him over to the bed -- it was Hakase's bed, as it happened, which made him feel just that much worse. She sat him down on the edge while she knelt on the floor between his legs, gazing down at what was between them. "You've grown so much since you left home," she said faintly. "Particularly down here."

Before he could say anything in response, her mouth was upon him. His member had lost some of the rigidity it had acquired unexpectedly from watching her kissed by Chizuru, but it was soon restored and enhanced by the warmth and wetness of her mouth, and the touch of her tongue.

Unlike Natsumi, she didn't spend any time experimenting with various methods, but went right to work with ones that proved very satisying. Negi found himself wondering, and then feeling ashamed of himself for wondering, how much experience his big sister had, and with whom she'd had it. Of course, he would have never dreamed of asking her.

Nor could she have answered under the circumstances. One particular lingual caress, and before he could even shout out a warning, he was releasing yet another jet of semen into her mouth. Now she pulled back, such that some of it took her on the chin instead. "So much," she said, rather dazedly.

"I'm sorry," Negi whimpered.

"Don't apologize," Nekane said vaguely, as she brought up a hand to wipe the ejaculate from her face, licking her palm as she did. It was the scent, she decided. It was so intoxicating.

"But, but I messed up your dress," he pointed out.

Nekane blinked, and looked down. Sure enough, some of his semen had gotten on her blouse, and it was probably going to leave a stain. "Oh, well," she said. "I suppose that I'd better take it off, then." And she promptly did so, exposing her bra, one every bit as lacy and scandalous as what Chizuru usually wore, to his wondering eyes.

"Are, are we just supposed to sit here and watch this happening?" Chisame asked, having been doing just that for a while now.

"You could always try to join in, but I don't imagine that would go over very well," Chizuru said casually.

"Then, Chizuru-san," Ayaka took a moment to ask, "Who was that girl you were talking about, the one you thought was like Nekane-san?"

"Oh, in the name of all kami, Iinchou!" Chisame spoke before Chizuru could reply. "I can't believe it! You'll never get it unless it's spelled out for you, right? It's clear the person Naba was talking about is a certain dense snobby blonde, who always acts bullheaded and goes ahead without stopping to think! Someone who, okay, might have a good heart, and okay, might be, uh, kinda pretty and, uh, sexy, never mind, what's wrong with me besides everything, but also someone who is a complete and total clueless holier than thou--"

Then Ayaka gasped in realization. "Chizuru-san!" she interrupted Chisame, staring wide-eyed at Naba. "You mean ... you ... you are ... IN LOVE WITH SUZUSHIRO-SEMPAI?!"

Natsumi and Chisame fell flat on their faces. Negi and Nekane were too busy to even notice anything beyond their ongoing union.

Chizuru put a hand on Ayaka's cheek and smiled placidly. Then she leaned her face ahead and gave her the deepest, wettest kiss of her young life.

_Oh. Oh,_ Ayaka realized through the stupor. _So it was me! It was me all along! Well, why didn't anyone say so before?_ she thought with still blissfully oblivious annoyance as she was gently pushed down onto the top of the dining table.

"Hey!" shouted Chisame as Chizuru began kissing her way down Ayaka's supine form. "Hey, cut it out, we eat there, for pity's sake!"

Neither of them paid her any heed, nor made any response. Unless you wanted to count the weird, polysyllabic groan made by a wide-eyed Ayaka when Chizuru reached her destination.

"So does she, it looks like," Natsumi said faintly, staring in what only be called awe at the coupling going on in front of her. Realizing that Chisame was glaring at her, she shook her head and said, "Oh, come on, it's not like you weren't thinking it!"

"I was not!"

Meanwhile, over on Satomi's bunk, Nekane had finished stripping off her clothes and was now cuddled up to Negi, pressing her breasts up towards his face. "You like big breasts, don't you, Negi?" she asked.

Negi was well-aware that this was a very dangerous question. If he expressed a great deal of liking for large breasts, like these ones that were pressing into his face, there was a good chance that Natsumi-san, nearby, would overhear and be hurt by his expressed preference for a feature she lacked. Contrariwise, expressing distaste for them would hurt the feelings of Nekane, the person he was with right now, as well as Ayaka-san and Chizuru-san, who admittedly seemed distracted by something else at the moment. It would also, he had to admit, beggar belief.

So he was acting solely in the interests of not hurting anyone's feelings when he mouthed the breast presented to him, so that he could only respond with what was intended as a noncommittal grunt.

"Yes, yes, you do," Nekane sighed. "I remember how you used to crawl into my bed and curl up against me, just like this, and how sometimes your lips would get around my nipple somehow, just like they are now. I'm so sorry that there was never any milk for you."

_Uh,_ Negi thought. _This is going to some very strange places._

"It probably goes back to when you were just a baby and we had to feed you formula from a bottle," she continued on dazedly, not noticing the embarassed flush that was beginning to color Negi's cheeks. "You didn't want the bottle, you wanted mother's milk, didn't you? I'm so sorry I couldn't give it to you. I'm so sorry that I was just your big sister, and not your mother."

That probably had to rank right up there on the list of all the things that people might not want to hear under circumstances like this. Ordinarily, the humiliation and embarassment of being told all of this would have put paid to any erection Negi had developed, but the soft grip of Nekane's hand on it, and the way that she rubbed and stroked down there, kept him hard despite himself. All right, the scent of her obvious arousal might have had something to do with it, too.

Negi found himself reaching out to caress the folds of Nekane's vulva with his own fingers, perhaps to distract her long enough to let go of him. If that was his goal, and he wasn't even sure about that, he was in for disappointment. Nekane's head lolled back, and she gasped, rather loudly. Loud enough to make Negi worry about the silencing spell he'd thrown up around the room after she'd left, to make sure that no one could listen in on the conversation. It had to be fraying around the edges by now, but he didn't quite know how to suggest that his sister should be quiet under the circumstances.

"Haaaaa, ha, ha, in me, Negi," Nekane finally gasped, once she found words again. "I want you in me."

That really called out for a reply. So he let go of his suckling on her breast, noting with dismay the bruise that was forming there, and swallowed before saying, "Well, maybe we should save that for another time?"

"Oh, Negi," she said, sadly, looking down at him. "So sweet and considerate. But I've always been a first date sort of girl, you know. Pleaaaase put it in me."

Oh well. It had been a valiant effort. But there was really nothing for it but to proceed. So he slid up the leg that was wrapped around his hip, until he felt himself pressing up against the entrance ... and then pushed further, up and into her.

He almost fell back in panic when she let out a shriek and clenched down around him, achieving the first orgasm simply from penetration. That was going to test the sound blocking spell, he thought dazedly as he began to pump, almost reflexively now. Well, hopefully no one would notice or ask any questions.

* * *

Kerberos was sticking his ear to a wall when Nodoka and Yue walked into the bedroom, buttoning their night shirts up.

"Kero-san?" Yue asked. "What's going on?"

"I have no idea," the plush animal confessed, frowning deeply, which only gave him a comical appearance. "I think I heard strange sounds coming from there, but I'm not too sure."

"Kero-san, you're a snoop," Yue chided him. "Surely it's only Chisame scolding Negi-sensei again. Nothing to worry about."

But Nodoka, being Nodoka, couldn't help feeling worried. "Are you sure, Yue?" she grabbed an empty glass from the nightstand, placed it against the wall, and stuck her ear to it. Yue had a sweatdrop moment at that. "Ah... I don't know. Honestly, I can't hear anything..."

"It's because nothing is happening," Ayase sat down on the lower bunk. "I'm tired, Nodoka. Let's just go sleep already."

Kero's mouth moved around strangely as he tried to figure out exactly what he was feeling now. "I've got it!" he finally cried. "I know what's causing this muting effect! It's a sound blocking spell!"

"Pardon?" Nodoka blinked.

"Hah!" Kero put a paw on his chest. "A good spell, but you can't fool the ears of a Clow Reed creation! Master Clow was cracking this kind of spell when he was seven!"

"W-Why would Negi-sensei place that kind of spell on his room?" Nodoka gulped.

"Maybe he's practicing some other spells, and he doesn't want to disturb everyone else," reasoned Yue.

"Why would he practice spells in his bedroom so late?" Nodoka questioned.

Kero blinked. "What's so strange about that? Master Clow did it all the time!"

Ignoring him, Yue sighed. "Okay. Then, perhaps Hakase-san is busy with some of her experiments. You know she does that at all times, and she can be very noisy."

"Hakase-san is in her laboratory tonight," Nodoka informed. Kerberos and Yue stared at her. "W-w-What?"

"You pay that much attention to what Negi-sensei's roommates are up to?" Yue asked.

"W-Well, it's important to, just in case, ah, he's attacked or something!" his friend blanched. "I, eh, uh, ah, might have to help him, if he's all alone, or even if-- if--!"

Kero waved a paw. "Okay, okay, we understand. It's creepy, but we understand! But never mind, I know just the thing for this."

"A counter-spell? C-can we cast scrying magic with the cards I have?" asked Nodoka.

"Not at all." Kero held up a miniature drill. "But sometimes, the mundane way works just as fine!" And he chuckled evilly, placing the drill against the wall and turning it on.

"They'll hear you!" Nodoka hissed urgently, while Yue slammed a hand's palm on her own face.

"No. The sound blocking barrier always works both ways," Kero said. "They can't hear us either. All set!" he giggled, tossing the mini drill aside once a small peep hole had been perforated. "Nothing escapes Kerberos' watchful eye!" he crooned, applying his right eye to the tiny opening. A moment later, he slumped down to the floor, rigid and stark white, his eyes popping out.

Nodoka and Yue sprang into alert. "Kero-san!"

Before they reached him, Kero flew up and covered the hole with his body. "There's nothing to see here!"

Frowning, and in no mood for games, Yue walked past the terrified Nodoka and pushed the Clow Guardian aside, placing her own left eye on the hole. Another moment later, she slid down to the floor next to Kero, just as livid and stiff.

"What's going on?" Nodoka made her own way to the hole, almost stomping, The Windy and The Jump ready in each hand. "What's happening to Negi-sensei?!"

Yue tried to utter a warning, but no sound save for a strangled gurgle came out as Nodoka bent over and took a look. Then Honya froze, her mouth hanging open.

She was staring at Negi-sensei's bare backside, as he stood before Hakase's bunk, on top of a naked, shapely female lying there, grabbing her legs while thrusting his ... crotch ... crotch-thing ... into her time and time again. Her cries were muted by the spell, but they were obvious from the way she moved her mouth. Was that Iinchou? Nodoka managed to think through her unspeakable horror. It was difficult to tell from that angle, but still, that was the least of her concerns as she fainted back into Yue's arms.

* * *

"Yes! Yes yes yes yesss!" Nekane and Ayaka both cried out, their voices forming a somewhat disturbing synchrony. Natsumi had noted the odd similarity between the two of them before this, and nothing that had happened since then had changed her mind about it. If anything, they'd reinforced the impression. But now was not the time to be reflecting on that similarity. She had other things on her mind.

"Isn't this a little uncomfortable?" she asked Chisame. "To just be watching this?

"That's what I said before," Chisame snapped.

"Well, yes, you did say that before, well, this happened," Natsumi agreed, gesturing in the direction of Chizuru, who'd moved past the oral sex acts she'd started performing on Ayaka's person, and basically scissored their legs together so that their mounds pressed up against each other. This was apparently very entertaining to both of them, to judge from Ayaka's cries and the decidedly unsaintly smile on Chizuru's face.

Natsumi pulled her eyes off of them and looked at Chisame, who seemed every bit as flustered as she felt. "But I mean, if they found something else to do instead of watching sensei doing it with his, well, his cousin, maybe we can --"

Chisame's jaw dropped again. "You're coming on to me. Aren't you?"

"Mmmaybe?" Natsumi admitted, smiling weakly.

"Dammit! I've told you, I'm not doing anything with Kagarazuka, or Matoi, or Hakase, or anybody else, so why would you think that I'd do stuff like that with you?! Even if I accept that I'm a pervert, and a really messed up pervert at that, it doesn't mean that I go both ways!"

Chisame would have probably ranted further, but Natsumi cut her off quietly. "Well, I kinda think that I do," she said, flushing, with another glance at Chizuru and Ayaka's bodies contorting against one another.

"Good for you," Chisame growled. "Go pet your own damn kitten, then."

"Pet your --" Natsumi said, eyebrows crinkled. Before Chisame could elaborate, though, realization dawned on her face. "Oh, you're talking about masturbation! Well, I guess I could do that, but ... well, haven't you found that masturbation doesn't really do it as much as it used to, now that you've had sex?"

"I have found that I'm not going to have this conversation, is what I've found," Chisame retorted, blushing almost incandescently. The fact was that, even if she'd had time to take care of her own needs, she hadn't felt any particular need to take care of her needs, recently.

"And, well, when I did what I did with sensei, it was really all about him, and so I didn't, well, I liked doing it, but I didn't ... get anywhere, I guess is what I'm trying to say," Natsumi continued, slowly edging towards the other girl. "So, it really wouldn't feel as good doing things alone as it would with someone else, and everyone else is busy, and, well, you didn't mind last time, when Chizu-ne's finger was up you at the same time as sensei's dick, did you?"

It would have been very easy for Chisame to lie her tongue black and claim that not only had she not enjoyed that at all, she hadn't realized that there was a girl's finger up inside of her at the same time, let alone that it was Naba's, and that she wasn't curious about whether it would be better without a boy's thing as well, and similar self-serving falsehoods. But the same perversion that had gotten her into this mess in the first place made her say something very different.

"Oh, fine," she said, not meeting Natsumi's eyes. "Just, just don't go getting attached, all right?"

"Oh, don't worry," Natsumi assured her as she closed the rest of the distance between them. "You're way too bitchy to be my type."

Before Chisame could object to that characterization, Natsumi was kissing her and pushing her to the floor of the room. She wasn't brave or experienced enough to do the things that Chizuru had done, so she settled for reaching down to caress Chisame's mound with her fingers while rubbing her own against the other girl's thigh.

It felt very good.

It looked rather cute, too, or at least that was Chizuru's perspective as she cast a brief glance in their direction. Having ground Ayaka through two orgasms without achieving one herself, she had prevailed upon her dear friend to perform cunnilingus upon her, and was presently seated at the center of the table, holding Ayaka's head down between her legs while she leaned back and enjoyed the sensation. Ayaka was horribly inexperienced, but the limitations of her technique were more than balanced by her enthusiasm and by the emotional pleasure of being loved by the girl she'd loved from afar for so long.

And as though that wasn't enough, she also had the intellectual pleasure of watching Natsumi and Chisame discovering these joys for themselves. Added to the knowledge that Shiina and Hakase had taken their relationship beyond the romantic two girl friendship stage, this gave her hope that the other girls in her class would also learn the beauty of the love of women. And then have the whole class join together in a celebration of that beauty, together.

Most of them, at least. There was one girl whom she didn't want to have these joys, or join that celebration. No, it would be better to give her to her father as a present, a toy, to let him do anything and everything to her as fucking Taiga was made to watch and realize how far short she fell of satisfying his needs, and Ayaka also watched, so that Chizuru could hiss in her ear, _See, that is what that one should get, you deserve better, you deserve me, but you would rather chase after_ that one _, but now you see what_ she _is, now you are mine, mine,_ mine mine **mine mi--**

... but that would be wrong. Of course.

So as Ayaka brought her to orgasm, and Chizuru pulled her up to taste herself on her lover's lips, she confined herself to less-wrong notions, like finding out what it looked like when Ayaka and Nekane made love to each other. Her notions of wrong were, perhaps, different from those of most people.

Nekane, unaware of all this, was still rocking beneath Negi's thrusts. "Yes, Negi," she said. "Fuck me like that."

He flinched at the profanity, since it didn't suit her.

She apparently didn't notice his discomfort, however. "It feels so good when you fuck me, Negi. Fuck me and spill into me, cum inside of me, this is a good day for it, I'm sure to conceive today --"

"Gh?" This sort of statement went well past 'eh?' territory.

"-- then I'll finally be able to give you the milk that you wanted so badly all those years ago and --"

_All right,_ Negi thought, managing to retain a remarkable degree of self-control under the circumstances. _This has officially gone too far._

"-- give it to our baby too and --"

He perceived, a moment before it would have been too late, the signs of Nekane's incipient orgasm and pulled back and out of her before she could clench around him and make it impossible to do so. Unfortunately, the relief of having succeed in this task proved to be more than he could take, and his own climax soon followed, spewing out thick white streams onto her breasts and belly.

A moment of silence ensued, broken by the distant sounds of sapphic revelry.

"You pulled out," Nekane said, as though pointing out something well-hidden.

"Uh-huh," Negi said ... then collapsed beside her, and was asleep in moments. Perhaps someday he would be able to achieve a total of five orgasms in a short timeframe, and go on for more, but this was not yet that day.

"Ah well," Nekane said, still dazedly, as she scraped up the sperm and brought it to her mouth. "I can't give you milk, but you gave me yours, so it balances out ..."

* * *

Later, much later, Nekane quietly dressed herself again, having showered after she awoke from the doze she'd eventually fallen into, curled up beside Negi's naked form. When she'd awakened, the other girls in the room had also been asleep, having worked themselves into exhaustion in their activities. She had done her level best to avoid awakening them.

In this, as in so much else of late, her best wasn't good enough.

"Going somewhere?" Chizuru's voice quietly asked as the tall young woman looked up at Nekane from where she still lay between Ayaka and Natsumi's bodies, with Chisame cuddling up behind the smaller girl.

"To hell, probably," Nekane replied, just as quietly. "But then, I suppose that I always was."

"How charmingly Calvinist," Chizuru sniffed. Nekane silently noted that the girl was unusually well-informed about Western religions before Chizuru continued. "You're not going to go inform on us, not now."

"Indeed?" Nekane asked.

"Now you are as guilty as any of us," Chizuru said with a nod.

"If not more so," Nekane agreed.

"So it would be absurd for you to expose us, since --"

"But there is something you have failed to take into consideration," interrupted Nekane. "You haven't considered the possibility that I might hate myself, now, enough to bring about my own destruction in the name of thwarting you."

Chizuru blinked, for once genuinely taken aback. "That's insane. You'd have to be mad to do something like that."

"Yes," agreed Nekane. "And perhaps I am that mad. I will leave the rest to you," she added. And then, before Chizuru could say anything else, much less try to stop her, she was out the door and it was closed behind her.

Despite how warm she found herself, Chizuru felt cold.

* * *

"--oka? Nodoka?" she heard as consciousness returned to her. She struggled to lift her eyelids, finding the concerned faces of Yue and Kerberos looming over hers.

"I was about to call a doctor, Nodoka." Yue seemed to breathe easier now. "First I called Ako, but she wasn't home. I thought about calling Haruna, but .. well, you know how she is. And about Serikawa-sensei and Yohko-sensei, well, they would ask ... and ..." She shook her head. "Forget it, that isn't important now. I was an idiot."

Her friend lifted a hand and grabbed hers tightly. Yue shuddered, feeling Nodoka's hand to be cold as ice.

"Yue. Kero-san." When she spoke, it was with a ragged, suffering voice.

"Rest easy, Nodoka," the small animal told her. "I'm sure, ah, if we try enough, we can find an explanation."

Nodoka sat up rubbing her eyes with a hand, and yet they still wouldn't stop leaking wetness. She was actively trying to hide her face under her bangs, something she hadn't tried in months, Yue noted with concern.

"Nodoka," Baka Black told her, very seriously. "Lie down. Don't do this to yourself."

"I'm not doing anything," Nodoka said in a strange, distant voice. "I never do."

"Nodoka, what--" Kero tried to say, but she only shook her head.

"Haruna always was right. I wasted my time doing nothing. I-- I--!"

To stop her trembling (and her own) Yue placed her hands on her best friend's shoulders. "Listen. Doing something like that? I'll be frank with you, doing something like that is far worse than doing nothing. I'm sorry, Nodoka, very sorry. I'll help you all the way through, but you should never think --"

Nodoka pressed a hand over her own features, sobbing. "Yue, please. Don't try reasoning with me. I don't want to reason! I don't want to hear how I have been wise and smart, how I've done the right thing. I don't want to hear how it's stupid to have a crush on a child, no matter how true it is. I don't want to, to ..."

She hugged Yue, trembling violently, and cried on her shoulder. With a scrunched, pained face of her own, Yue gently hugged her back, patting Nodoka's back softy.

Kero, more powerless than ever, sat on the nightstand, his head and tail hanging down.

"It hurts, Yue! It hurts so much!"

"Nodoka, maybe we should -- I don't know -- tell someone about this?" Yue considered quietly. "I mean, it's bad, it's wrong, and by omission, we would --"

Nodoka jerked back abruptly, only one wide open reddened eye visible between her hair. "NO!"

"But Nodoka! It's completely wrong, it's legally abuse and --"

Nodoka grabbed her own shirt, squeezing tightly over her chest. "Yue, you'll ruin Negi-sensei's life! And one thing will lead to another, and all the secrets will be out, and everyone who has ever been associated with him will have their lives ruined, too! I couldn't live with that on my conscience!"

Yue still tried to argue. "Still, what we just saw ... it's just so horrible, we can't turn a blind eye! Think about it, Nodoka! I'm sure we don't need to involve Asuna and the others in this, but --!"

"No!" Nodoka repeated.

Yue frowned. "Nodoka, this isn't only about your own feelings. We have a moral and personal duty to --"

Her friend made a frustrated sound, gripping the bedsheets under her. "Let them be. It's okay. Even if he'll never love me back, I still trust N-Negi-sensei. If he's thought it's ... okay ... to do that, I w-won't argue. He's far more mature than most adults I've ever know. He knows --"

Yue pinned her shoulders down with her hands again. "He knows? He knows? We've just seen proof he doesn't know! Nodoka, I'm sorry to say this to you, but stop playing the love martyr! I just told you this isn't a simple matter of being --" and she stopped, unable to say the word.

"Dumped," Nodoka said it anyway, sadly. "No, I haven't been dumped. I never was there in the first place."

"Nodoka, I didn't want to --"

"It's okay," she lied, trying to reign the tears back, and still failing. "It's fine, eventually I'll stop acting like an idiot over this. Then I'll keep a cool head like you, and I'll g-get over this all. I'll focus on being a good Card Captor to help Kero-san and everyone, and someday, I'll grow up to h-h-have my own destiny, and I-I'll marry ... a man who really can love me ... for what I am ... and ..."

She crumpled down crying again.

Without saying a word, Yue just sat before her and hugged her again, not too loose or too tight, simply rocking her back and forth tenderly. It was impossible for Kero to read Ayase's thoughts or her neutral but distant expression; the only clear thing was she was there for Nodoka, and for now, that was all that mattered.

A few hours later, once Nodoka finally fell asleep from sheer emotional exhaustion, Yue tucked her under the blankets and put on her jacket.

"Are you going to tell --" Kero began to ask, before being sharply interrupted again.

Yue was shaking her head. "Nodoka doesn't want this to be known, and no matter how wrong she is, I'll respect her wishes. For now, at least. Not a word of this to anyone, not even Haruna. Most especially not Haruna. If she calls or knocks, tell them we're out for the time being. I'll go see if I can find Ako myself and think of a good way to tell her."

Once she was closing the door, standing on the hallway, she froze when she saw a young tall woman walking towards Negi's door. The young lady paused in a terrified half-moment herself at seeing Yue, but then she recovered and made a polite and warm, even though slightly nervous, smile. "Oh, good morning. Aren't you one of Negi's students?"

Yue had to nod stiffly, recognizing the long golden mane. It had been this person, not Iinchou. Oh dear God. What.

"Ah ... Ayase Yue," she forced herself to answer. "G-Good morning. Y-You are --"

"Nekane Springfield, Negi's older sis-- cousin. I'm in a visit to --"

"Sorry. I think I'm in a hurry. Nice to meet you, hope to see you later," Yue talked with a dry throat, spinning on her heels and making a quick getaway. She hoped dearly it wasn't too conspicuous, but she just couldn't stay there.

Nekane stood there in silence for a moment, then knocked at Negi's door.

Under the blankets, keeping her eyes closed, Nodoka reminded herself to keep up a brave front for Yue. Yue didn't deserve this. She couldn't break down on her again. The help she needed was beyond Yue's reach or power to give.

Luckily, Nodoka knew a discreet psychologist.

\----

"Okay, how about this. We'll flee to Utah and --"

"First of all, the Mormons don't do that anymore," Chisame growsed, glaring at Ayaka. "Secondly, I'm pretty sure that even when they did, they didn't let ten year old boys get married." She wasn't really sure of that, but wasn't about to let that stop her. "Thirdly, there's the whole magic thing, which will put the kibosh on the idea. Fourthly, hello, you go both ways, idiot! That's a major no-no there! And finally, Mormons don't drink Coke. And if you think I'm giving up my Coke just to be with the brat, you've got another --"

"That is sooo typical of you, Chisame-san!" Ayaka sneered. "Always putting your selfish desires ahead of what is good for everyone else! Always criticizing everyone else's ideas without putting forward anything better! Look at how disappointed Negi-sensei is in you!"

They paused to glance briefly at Negi, who hadn't said a word all morning, since he woke up to find Nekane gone from the dorm room. He didn't look disappointed, really. More terrified than anything else. And the way he seemed to be staring off into space all this time was very creepy.

Also creepy was the way that Chizuru wasn't saying or doing anything either, just sitting back and sipping tea from her cup while smiling her scary saintly smile. Well, she'd been sipping tea from her cup until it was empty. Now she was just lifting it to her lips as though there were still liquid in it. One expected her to be saying "Oh my" from time to time, but she said nothing, as though afflicted by the same mental paralysis that gripped Negi. Well, if things were blowing up in their faces, that was somewhat understandable.

Understandable or not, though, it still left dealing with the explosive situation entirely in the hands of Ayaka and Chisame.

And Natsumi, of course, who had finally had enough and decided to say so. "Please, stop," she cried. "Both of you, please, stop! Why, why must the two of you always, always turn everything into an argument? We're all on the same side here! We all love Negi-sensei, and want the best for him! You both know this, however you might deny it! So enough with the vanity and foolish pride! If we all work together, we can overcome any of the problems that confront us! Not easily, perhaps, but with effort and determination! But if we fight each other, we won't accomplish anything except hurting each other's feelings and leaving us vulnerable to those who would stop us! So please, please, please, stop!"

It was a terribly moving speech that almost burst out of Natsumi. It is a real tragedy that only the first two words were ever actually spoken, right before there was a firm knock at the dormitory door.

"Gyyaaaah!" Natsumi shrieked, the rest of the speech completely disappearing from her mind as panic took its place. "They've come for us!" she added as she attempted, without much success, to burrow into the small crawlspace beneath the bunkbeds.

Negi was finally stirred to action. "Oh," he said faintly. "Someone is at the door. I'll go see who it is." And with that, before anyone could stop him, he got up from where he was sitting and drifted in the general direction of the door.

_It won't be so bad, being an ermine,_ he told himself, and threw open the door.

"Good morning, Negi," Nekane said calmly as she stood in the hallway outside the door. "I'm sorry that I had to leave so early this morning. May I come in?"

"Nnnnnnnnnn," Negi said, eyes wild, as he looked down the corridor, both ways, and failed to see any signs of intruders about to take advantage of his confusion to break down his door and drag him away to whatever fate awaited awful perverted boys like himself.

"Is that a no?" Nekane asked, somewhat bemused.

"No!" Negi denied.

"... are you saying that it's not a no, or confirming that --"

"No, I mean, yes, yes, please, do come in, dearest and best beloved older sister who is really my cousin, ha ha ha," he said quickly.

"You seem even more tense than you've been recently," Nekane commented as she came through the door and watched him close it behind her. "Is something the matter?"

Was something the matter? Has she forgotten everything that had happened yesterday? Negi wondered frantically. Wait, no, that would be a good thing! Except that I'd be wondering forever if she was going to regain her memories at the worst possible time, and -- aaaaaaah! "No, I'm just a little bit stressed," he told her, smiling broadly.

"Well, I'll do what I can to ease your stress," she promised him as they walked into the room. "Good morning, ladies," she said as she saw them. "It's good that you're all here, as it saves me the trouble of finding you."

At the entrance of Nekane, Chizuru finally roused herself from whatever confusion had enveloped her. "Welcome back," she said, calmly and evenly.

"Thank you," Nekane replied with a polite nod in Chizuru's direction. "I had to go out to do some research, but I've found what I was looking for." She reached into her purse and pulled out a small tome, about the size of a pocket Gideon's Bible, and handed it to Negi. "It's for your benefit and everyone else's, as well."

Negi looked at the tome. "A Spell Against Conception?" he read aloud. Then grew pale. "Is this what I think it is?"

"I can't read minds, Negi, but it is what it says that it is," Nekane confirmed. "You'd probably run into trouble if you went looking for it yourself, but I wouldn't. So look for it I did."

"That's, that's a magic birth control spell?" Natsumi asked, having paused in her efforts to seek a hiding place.

"Yes. Now, Negi, a proper English gentleman should always take care of such matters, and not expect his acquaintances to take care of their own prophylaxis. I expect you to master that spell quickly," Nekane said. "After all, it's also a gentleman's responsibilty to make a lady happy, and you can't do that if they're constantly worrying about the prospect of pregnancy." She said it so cheerfully, too.

"I'm doomed," Negi said. All the girls were too busy thanking Nekane to hear him.

* * *

Yue learned from Ako that Akira was simply exhausted from the previous night for some reason or another. The swimmer was on her lower bunk, sleeping like a log and too tired to even go open the door, and Ako, who apparently had a heavy night of her own, also took her time to wake up. That was the reason Izumi gave Yue as part of her apologies on taking so long to answer her knocks, not to mention not taking her calls earlier.

Yue apologized back, saying she didn't have the right to interrupt their rest, but since it was for Nodoka's health, Ako still had to come with her. Of course, Izumi had agreed readily, and soon they were at Nodoka's bedside despite Miyazaki's protests of feeling fine, really.

Yue, despite having far more pressing concerns on her mind, couldn't help wondering about the two Sports Girls. From what Ako had said, she and Akira had been at different places. Ako had mentioned something about being with Yuuna, Makie and Skuld of all people, but then she had quickly deviated from the subject, as if it troubled her. Akira's whereabouts only got a brief mention of her being with Minako-san. (Yue didn't even know who Minako-san was, although Ako somehow seemed to assume she knew. Yue didn't ask, though.)

"Well," the assistant nurse said as she finished Nodoka's check-up, "You're in physical top shape, Honya-chan. As a matter of fact, I'd say you have exercised more since your last revision. I don't think you have anything but a case of, ah ... emotional exhaustion," she said, trying to sound as professional and detached as she could.

Nodoka nodded. "Yes. Um, sorry, I knew that, but Yue-Yue worries so much about me."

"Well, I have to," Yue sighed. No one else does, she thought bitterly, but it wasn't said. Not your parents, not Negi-sensei, and even though Haruna would, it'd be worse if she knew about this than if she didn't care. Then again, she told herself, did Negi-sensei really have to care to that point? If he didn't love Nodoka, he wasn't forced to accept her feelings, was he? That was the way Haruna thought, wasn't it? Nodoka would just have to accept that and move on, finding herself someone else who actually loved her, someone like ... like ... "I guess I'm just a worrywart when it comes to Nodoka," she said aloud

"Oh, Akira-chan is the same with me," the sickly nurse smiled, "Although she is growing out of it," she added, a microscopic bit more sadly. "Anyway, I'll go make breakfast." She stood up. "Just rest for the rest of the day, drink a lot of water, eat well and don't pressure yourself, Honya-san, and you should be fine for school tomorrow."

"Thank you, Izumi-san," Nodoka said honestly.

"I'll walk you to your door," Yue offered.

Once they stood out in the hallway, and after checking there was no one near, Ako said, "Yue-san, don't worry. I'm not going to ask what happened to Honya-san, and much less tell anyone about this."

"I know. And we're thankful for it."

"Yes." Ako rubbed one of her eyes. She looked, if anything, more tired now. Yue noticed there even was something odd in the way she walked as she escorted her back to her room. She hadn't really seen it earlier, being too worried about Nodoka. "I know ... I have come to learn we all have secrets that just have to be kept."

Yue could do nothing but nod.

"Still, if you ever feel you really need to tell someone, I'll always be there. I only dare asking one thing in trade. If I ever have to tell you a secret of mine, n-no matter which one ... will you hear it too?"

"I swear I will," Yue promised stoically.

Ako smiled and hugged her. Now that was a surprise. "Thank you, Yue-san. Please have a nice day," she said before bowing and closing the door after her. Yue only could weakly wave her bye.

She was the only bastion of sanity left in her world, apparently.

That was something she always suspected, but somehow, the confirmation terrified her.

* * *

Meanwhile, Chamo approached the building with the exhausted swagger of a killer hangover in his steps. Memo to self: Never try outdrinking a mechanical magical doll again, he told himself. He chuckled, already setting a date for breaking that vow.

Then, for a moment, he seemed to hear Ride of the Valkyries humming over his head. He chalked it up to residual liquor effects before being rudely tackled from above, slammed into the dirt.

"BASTAAAAAARD!" a shrill voice with Osaka accent shouted, ringing on his aching skull.

The ermine sprang up defensively, although he only managed to trip clumsily and fall on his face again. He looked up at the orange being standing over him and fuming. "Wha? Kero-kun? What's up, what's your big idea, why so angry, why--"

Kerberos grabbed him by the fur of his chest and slammed him against the nearest wall. "You pervert! Depraved monster! Filthy ... filthy weasel!"

"Wha? Wha? Why? Hey, keep it down! We are in the open! You shouldn't even be seen in public! What if someone --!"

Kero just slapped his face. His paws were so soft Chamo barely felt the slap, but the mere shock was enough to silence him.

"You and your master have just broken Nodoka's heart, and I'll never forgive that!" Kero all but cried. "Not only that, but you have perverted a young boy's life! I don't know how you can live with yourself!"

"What? What did the Bro do? He tried to grab Honya-nee? It must have been an accident! You know how they are!"

Kero seethed. "I can't believe it! Well, I guess playing the fool must be easy for you, FOOL! Well, you can't fool me and make a fool out of me, FOOL! I saw everything!"

"Could've fooled me," Chamo dryly said. "What 'everything' are you talking about? For real, I have no idea! If I had set something juicy up, I would've been there, not away getting wasted over my woes!" He belched a putrid cloud on Kero's face, and the plush lion staggered back, almost drunk himself only from sniffing that. "See?"

Kero waved a paw before his face, scowled and gave the ermine elf a wary, distrustful glare. "It's all your fault anyway. If you really don't know, ask you Master! He'll tell you of how well he took all your advice!" And he flew away without a single more word, leaving a puzzled Chamo sitting there.

Then the white animal put a paw on his snout and hummed.

Asking the Bro? No, if that stupid plush doll was right and he wasn't just imagining things or taking them out of context, then the Bro would never tell him about it.

It was okay, though. Chamo had alternatives.

* * *

She found the girl sleeping right outside Konoka and Asuna's window, hugging a picture of one of the girls who had helped them in Kyoto. What was her name again? Chisame, that was it. And the sleeping girl's name was Matoi. Tsunetsuki Matoi. She had made sure to keep decent mental notes on them, since they could need her help, or viceversa, at any time.

"Tsunetsuki-han," she spoke firm but gently, standing before her. Her acquired Kyoto accent standing out. "What are you doing here?"

Like all stalkers (and she knew them well; she had amassed a large amount of them during her omiai phase, all those years ago), the girl had fast reflexes and a light sleep. She sprang back to her feet like an alarmed cat, shaking her daze off and focusing her round dark eyes on the newcomer.

"Konoka-san? I, I mean, Konoka-sama's mother? W-What are you doing here?"

"Well, aren't we allowed to visit our daughter?" The older Konoka look alike smiled with faint amusement. "The rebuilding chores at our home are almost finished, and thus, we have come to perform our most sacred duty; checking on our daughter's well being. Or daughters, in my husband's case," she mused, without any real bitterness to it. "Too much was left unsaid after Konoka-chan's kidnapping. And we have arrived to settle that down for good."

"Daughters?" Matoi, despite her studied and practiced aloofness in the face of danger, rejection and the paranormal, could only stand there in shock. "Wait. You said 'we'. Meaning, both of you? But, where --?"

"My husband is in talks with Father, discussing matters that are also of the utmost importance. He will be joining us shortly. In the meanwhile, would you like to come in with me? You look like you have been camping out here all night and dawn long."

"Uhhh, I've only been here since 10:45 PM."

Konoeko sighed inwardly. Couldn't her daughter ever make normal friends?

* * *

As he slowly trudged uphill after classes, with his head low and gloom in his heart, Negi vaguely wondered if all fair skinned, fair haired, European, mysterious, scary, intense, petite, tsundere girls in the Mahora area were contractually obliged to live out of the standard student body's dorms. However, he quickly cast that silly notion aside, as he arrived to the doors of the (allegedly) small Einzbern castle.

The Einzberns, as he was aware of now, had luxurious residences and summer homes all across the globe, near practically every large magical center, and Mahora had been no exception. But until Ilya had arrived from England, the Mahora castle in the woods, literally set as far away as possible from Evangeline's cottage, at the other edge of the grounds, had never been inhabited before. It was a testimony to the resourcefulness of Ilya and her maids that it, so soon after their arrival, looked as if it always been a thriving and charming Western home.

Under other circumstances, Negi would have stopped to enjoy the pleasant sights, from the house itself to the Mahora landscape below, but right now, he was in no mood for it. He was a dirty rat, he just knew it, and that was even without accounting what he had just done with his students and his cousin. That was why he was there now. To beg for forgiveness.

He breathed in as much as he could and he practiced the dreaded words.

"I'm sorry."

Well, that had been the easy part. After all, he was very used to apologizing. Explaining why he was sorry, that would be the difficult part.

"I'm sorry I didn't believe you were my sister."

Well, well. That had been rather easy, too. As long as he kept it concise and short, and he skipped over the ghastly parts, maybe he could even enjoy just having that particular load off of his chest.

"I have learned Father was, just like you said, a ..."

He covered his face with a hand. He had just struck a rough patch. His reluctance to ever say anything bad about his father teamed up with his knowledge of how Ilya would take badly anything that could be perceived as an insult against his ... no, their father, and they gave Negi a quick but brutal moral beating.

"I mean, I have just learned Father could, indeed, leave another child of his ..."

He stopped again and shook his head. No, that wasn't working, either. It'd hurt Ilyasviel as much as it hurt himself. He had to be tactful! How could he forget how to be tactful? Then he realized he never had to comment on anyone else's troubling family lives, and he wished he had taken fewer lessons on languages and more on psychology and counseling.

"I'm sorry I doubted you, you were right about Father!"

There. That was brief, flattering, honest, and unthreatening. Ilya would surely be satisfied with it. Smiling to himself, Negi rang the doorbell.

No one came to open the door for him.

He rang again.

Again, nothing.

He tried a third time.

Silence was his only reply.

Breathing easier, he turned around and began walking downhill. Well, that was a pity, but he'd just have to try again tomorrow! Ha ha! Ilya surely could wait another day. And he always could live another day more ...

Then he stopped, with ice filling his arteries, as he saw Ilyasviel herself coming up the road, followed by her black haired maid. "Ah ... Ilyasviel-san!"

"Oh, Little Brother!" The albino girl gave him a curious look. "What are you doing here?"

"... being sorry," was the best he could manage for the moment.

* * *

"So, basically, your cousin --" With a delicate cough, she corrected herself. "-- ah, our cousin told you our father was lecherous."

Negi resisted the urge to do a facefault. Ilya-chan was incredibly sharp in a way; the same way Chizuru was sharp. Chamo would have said she could cut through the bull. She had seen right through Negi's euphemisms and somehow nailed exactly what Nekane had said.

Fortunately, her guessing about Negi's recent activities was another thing altogether. He had been extremely careful of not mentioning anything at all about physical intimacy, although that left some large holes in his story; holes Ilya didn't seem eager to fill for the moment, luckily.

Now they were drinking tea and sharing biscuits at Ilyasviel's living room, while Sayoko-san worked at the kitchen, silent and dutiful.

"I wouldn't say exactly that," he hesitated. "For starters, I have no idea exactly how much people he was, ah, very close to. From what you have told me, it was only your mother and, logically, mine."

"She didn't tell you anything else?"

"No. It wasn't a topic either of us was very eager to pursue in-depth."

"Understandable," his half sister allowed. "Mother's letters didn't say too much, either, out of making clear that all four of them were involved with each other." Negi then spat a stream of tea out and began choking. "Oh dear, Little Brother! Why that reaction so suddenly?"

He blushed and looked at her eyes. "All ... all four?!"

Ilya nodded and made several funny 'linking' gestures with her fingers. "He and she, he and he, she and he, she and she. It's what the letters implied," she said, without minding it too much.

Negi gulped and silently wondered what kind of person would leave letters telling that to their children.

Ilya seemed to read that on his face, as well. "It was the truth," she sternly told him, "And while the fact may be painful at times, that's no reason to hide it. Look at yourself, Negi. You have lived an existence full of lies and secret truths to this point. You don't realize how wicked the adult world is."

"Actually, I think I _have_ started to realize it."

"Good for you. The sooner you know, the better. That's part of growing up, and people like us need to grow up fast. You're halfway there, but you're still too naive."

"That's not true! I --"

"You what?" she prodded, since he fell silent after that.

"Never mind."

Ilya lifted an eyebrow before offering him another biscuit. "Thanks," he sighed, taking it into his mouth. She giggled as he bit the biscuit right off her fingers.

"You're so cute! Promise you'll keep that even when you grow up," she asked. "Now listen, adults ... well, they make up lies to keep control over those they fear. That's what my clan did to me. They fed me with lies about my parents, and if not for Sayoko and my mother's documents, I'd have come to Japan angry with my adoptive father and the boy he took as his son here."

"Emiya Shirou-san, right?"

"Right," she nodded. "I plan to pay him a visit shortly. Regardless, Negi, I have no idea what our father did with his personal life out of that time when he lived with my parents and your mother, but I intend to learn it, and I can tell you want that, too. So let's join forces! Let that be our first act as siblings. We might not like what we find, but it always will be better than living lies, and even if we suffer, at least ... we will suffer together."

"I don't intend to let you suffer."

"It's okay," she sighed. "I'm used to suffering." She shrugged. "As are you, I suppose."

Negi shook his head. "No. No one's life is perfect, but I have been blessed with wonderful people to make me company," he recalled. "As long as they are with me, I'll never call myself unfortunate."

Ilya nodded absently. "I see. I envy that."

He placed a hand on hers. "Then let me be like that for you," he requested. "Sister."

Her eyes shot widely open, and red washed over her pale face. Coughing, she pushed the hand away in a fashion that really reminded him of Chisame, for some reason, and turned around awkwardly. "A-anyway! Would you like to see a picture of all four of them together? It's the only one Mother got to keep, but --"

Negi's interest grew out of control. "A photo?! Why didn't you tell me about it from the start?!"

She humphed. "I wanted you to believe me for what I said. When you rejected me, I was so angry I decided you weren't worth convincing. Don't think I'm not still cross at you over believing your cousin over your poor suffering sister." She wagged a finger at him, making him sweat, "But it's okay, I forgive you! And as a token of my good will --" She grabbed an old tome from a nearby stand and opened it, pulling an old photo out of it. "Ta-dah! The undeniable proof of our blood links!"

The first thing Negi bothered to look at was, naturally, his father's image. Nekane had lost all pictures of his parents during the village fires, and he couldn't remember those they had in his early childhood. His father was just like he remembered him from that night, but he could see his face clearly now, even more than when he had spied on Evangeline's memories. He was very handsome, with the charming smile of a winner.

He stood next to a somewhat shorter man in a dark coat, who had about two days of beard growth, wild hair and a sad smile and distant eyes. The two of them stood over two females sitting on twin chairs. One of them was nearly identical to Ilyasviel, but older and much curvier, gifted with angelic beauty and a dazzling smile. That had to be her mother. Sitting next to her, there was a taller woman who ...

Negi's heart stopped for a moment.

He recognized that woman.

She was The Shield.

* * *

OMAKE!

A humble and meek Negi took his place at the confessional. "Father ... I need advice on something, urgently."

The towering, Afro-sporting Father Garterbelt sighed as he sat in the other side of the confession box. "For the last time, the Church can't supply you with exact clues to your father's whereabouts. Just keep praying and working hard, and maybe some day --"

"I-I-I don't mean that! I, I just want to know, to which extent is a student-teacher relationship acceptable?"

"Well," the funky priest said, "that's an interesting question. Relationship of hatred, trade, love, politics, business, or the Satanic Dungeons & Dragons?"

"I-I-I don't hate my students, none of them! I'm not of age to trade comercially yet, my sister always warned me against politics, and I don't play tabletop games!"

"Ah. That narrows it down to love. You only teach girls, don't you?"

"Y-Yeah."

Negi could almost hear the large man rubbing his raspy chin. "Well, that's out of my area of expertise, then. But as long as you don't get them pregnant, I guess it's all right."

"WHAT?!"

"OK, OK, fuck, it's okay if you can take care of the girl and the baby, too."

"WHAAAAAAT?!?!"

"Sweet tap dancing Christ, boy, how much do you expect me to lower the bar? What, did you impregnate several at once?"

"I HAVEN'T IMPREGNATED ANYONE!"

"Then why're you wasting my fucking precious time with this, brat?! Shit, I thought it was something serious ... okay, pray five Hail Marys for ten straight nights, apologize to Kasuga-kun if she isn't the one you porked, and be happy."

"... this is very strange advice coming from a member of the Catholic clergy," Negi allowed himself to say.

"I'm as Catholic as you are Peruvian. So, who is it? The kiddy librarian? The slutty one? Suzushiro the Vice President?" When he spoke next, his tone was faintly incredulous. "Is it actually Kasuga-kun?"

"... I think I'll save that for my next confession. By the way, I also wanted to ask about whether it's acceptible to be intimate with a cousin --"

"Dammit, kiddo, just dammit!"

* * *

OMAKE!!

"Well, that worked out well, don't you think?" Natsumi said cheerfully when she and Chizuru were back in your room, seated at their table. "And you don't have to worry about the sex thing getting in the way of your friendship with Iinchou."

"Yes," Chizuru agreed, nodding. "I now see that sex can be a good way to strengthen a friendship."

And smiled.

Natsumi wondered why she was smiling like that.

For about five seconds.

"AAAAH! No! Chizu-ne! We eat here!"

"Oh-ho-ho. Sweet irony!"


End file.
